Following on from the previous post, here is the argument map of the “Gang of 43″ case that the Coalition of the Willing’s war on Iraq would be illegal:
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Posted in Argument Mapping, Deliberation, Legal Argumentation | 1 Comment »
This evening I was fortunate to meet Greg Hunt, Federal Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water. I mentioned how in 2003 I had used an opinion piece he had written in an exercise for undergraduate students. The exercise involved creating a map of his argument. He was, naturally, curious to see what such a map would look like.
Background: In the leadup to the (second) Iraq war, one of the hot topics of debate was whether the proposed invasion was legal in international law. In February 2003, a group of 43 Australian legal heavyweights published Coalition of the Willing? Make that War Criminals, arguing bluntly that the war would be illegal and that its architects (Bush, Howard, Major) would be war criminals. One of the ringleaders in this piece was Hilary Charlesworth, who had been one of Greg Hunt’s teachers at the University of Melbourne Law School.
Greg Hunt took on the task of responding publicly. In March 2003 he published Yes, This War is Legal.
At the time I was teaching critical thinking in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, using the method that we developed there, which was heavily based on argument mapping and required lots of practice mapping “real world” arguments. I could think of no topic more timely, contentious and important than the legality of the upcoming war – and conveniently we had 800 word presentations of the arguments on each side. So it made an ideal exercise in which these “best and brightest” young students could try out their emerging argument mapping skills.
For the record, I found that these students, among the most elite in the Australian educational system, were, for the most part, unable to ascertain the actual structure of the arguments presented on either side, even after having had many weeks of argument mapping training. They could get a rough sense of the arguments, but discerning the precise logical shape demanded considerably more expertise than they had at that time. Consequently, they were unable to properly evaluate the arguments; most ended up siding with the position they already favoured at an emotional or ideological level. This is just an illustration of a quite general phenomenon; on matters of any complexity, the actual arguments are simply not comprehendable by most people. And this of course is in large part because our standard means of presenting those arguments (e.g., in 800 word written opinion pieces in the newspaper) pose immense interpretative challenges. The problem is not so much that people are stupid, but that the task given to them is far too difficult.
Anyway, here, in bCisive 2 format, is my own rendition, in argument map, of Greg Hunt’s case:
[click on image to view full-size version]
I’m not endorsing this argument. What the map does is lay it out transparently, which lays the foundation for careful critique. You can see at a glance such basic features as how many lines of argument there are; which points have been supported, and which merely asserted; where key assumptions lurk, waiting to be exposed; and so on.
Posted in Argument, Argument Mapping, Critical Thinking, Legal Argumentation, Teaching | 3 Comments »
My colleague Paul Monk has posted Challenges of Our Time, the text of an oration he delivered recently, on the Austhink Consulting website.
It is a profound and sobering reflection on the numerous great problems currently facing “us”, i.e., humanity, and the intellectual challenge of dealing with them.
And, btw, it is a good manifestation of Paul’s extraordinarily broad grasp of world history and current affairs, and his ability to synthesize this knowledge into a form the rest of us can digest. Especially impressive when you realise that he wrote this in a few days in between many other tasks.
Posted in Paul Monk | Leave a Comment »
[also posted at austhinkconsulting.com]
I’m currently collaborating on a draft whitepaper on how decision mapping techniques might be used to improve the deliberations behind board-level decisions.
In 2006, Michael Useem, a distinguished professor at the Wharton Business School, published in Harvard Business Review an article entitled How Well-Run Boards Make Decisions. This seemed obviously relevant. I read it carefully looking for useful insights
It turned out, however, that the article is mostly not about how boards make decisions, but rather about what decisions are or should be made by boards.
If you winnow down the material to identify useful insights about board decision making itself, the article really just makes three recommendations:
Two skeptical comments:
Truisms are, of course, true. Yes, of course boards should review the options and they should evaluate the explanations and assumptions behind proposed decisions. These are starting points, not useful guidelines. The really interesting question is:
What concrete and practical things should boards do in order to ensure that they can effectively do things like reviewing the options and evaluating assumptions?
Our proposal is that one thing they may do is systematically adopt decision mapping practices.
More on this soon, when we release a draft of the whitepaper.
Posted in Boards, Decision Making, Decision mapping, Deliberation | 2 Comments »
Think of a collection of people as having a kind of collective mind. How can you find out what that collective mind believes?
That may sound like a fanciful philosophical question, but it has very real, even urgent applications. For example the IPCC is a collection of hundreds of scientists, and they put out reports supposedly embodying their consensus position – i.e. what they believe not as individuals but as a body of scientists.
There are of course already various methods for determining what people believe collectively; the IPCC have their own approach. Such methods have various strengths and weaknesses. For example, the IPCC approach is claimed to be riddled with political conflict.
A little while back, at Austhink, we came up with an alternative approach, which worked successfully in its first application. We have used it a number of times since with various organisations, calling it the “Wisdom of Groups” method.
Here is a write-up of the first deployment.
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A few years back, the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction and the South Australian Department of Health and Human Services put together a 3 day “Summer School” on the topic of addictions, inequalities and their interrelationships, with a view to providing guidance for policy makers. They said that 20% of the South Australian budget is used to deal with problems of addiction, so this is a major issue. They hoped to come up with a kind of Position Statement, which would summarise the consensus, if any, that the group of 50 or so participants reached during the Summer School.
They contacted Austhink hoping that we’d be able to help them with one aspect of it, namely making any debate/discussion/rational deliberation more productive. So initially the idea was that live argument mapping facilitation would be used with the whole group to help them work through some issues. But it became clear that they were open to ideas about how the Position Statement would be developed, and our involvement was increased to one of (a) developing a process for developing a Position Statement representing the group consensus, and (b) helping facilitate the overall Summer School to produce that Statement.
So we suddenly found ourselves faced with a very interesting challenge, which boiled down to:
This challenge has a lot in common with problems of democratic participation, of the sort that Deliberative Polling is intended to deal with.
Our approach, in a nutshell, was this:
The first two days were occupied mostly with presentations by a range of experts (this had already been set up by the organizers; we had to work around that). We divided the Position Statement into three categories:
At the end of the first day, participants filled out a worksheet asking them to nominate 5 distinct propositions in the Definitions and Values category, propositions which they regarded as true and worth including in any Position Statement. On the second day, they filled out similar workshops for Empirical Realities and Directions. Then, for each category, Paul Monk and I spent a few hours synthesizing the proposed propositions into a set of around 10 candidate statements for inclusion in the Position Statement. This involved sorting them into groups and then extracting the core proposition from each group. So this resulted in a set of about 32 statements. Note, however:
Half of day three was devoted to deliberating over selected statements, using real-time argument mapping with the Reasonable software. A whole-group session introduced the participants to the approach, and made some progress on a particular issue. In another session there were two groups with separate facilitators; each chose their own issues to debate.
In the final phase all participants used an online questionnaire to register their attitudes towards each of the 32 propositions. Each participant was asked, for each statement, to choose Agree/Disagree/Abstain, Include/Exclude/Abstain, and was able to offer comments. The online system automatically and immediately collated the results, producing graphical (bar chart) displays of the level of consensus.
In the final session, the results were reviewed. We found that there was a surprisingly high level of consensus on almost all propositions; that, in other words, the draft Position Statement did in fact represent a consensus opinion of the group. Note also that the Position Statement is accompanied by a precise specification of the extent to which the group in fact thought that each component statement was (a) true, and (b) worth including.
The level of consensus regarding the Position Statement developed through the process is particularly noteworthy in light of the fear, expressed to us prior to the Summer School, that there would be such disagreement between the major groupings of participants (roughly, the “addictions” people, and the “inequalities” people), that there would be literally nothing (or nothing worth saying) that they could agree on.
We think that this technologically-augmented (in two ways: argument mapping software+projection, and online questionnaire) process could well be deployed again in a wide range of contexts in which groups get together and need to figure out what they think on a complex issue; and in particular, need to figure out what, if anything, they can agree on to form a basis for policy.
Posted in Argument Mapping, Austhink, Belief, Deliberation, Rationale Consensus, Wisdom of Crowds | 5 Comments »
Print-friendly version (3 page pdf)
Entry to appear in H. Pashler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Volume expected to appear in 2011.
Argument mapping is diagramming the structure of argument, construed broadly to include any kind of argumentative activity such as reasoning, inferences, debates, and cases. This entry briefly surveys the nature, benefits, and historical context of this activity.
Nature of Argument Mapping
Typically an argument map is a “box and arrow” diagram with boxes corresponding to propositions and arrows corresponding to relationships such as evidential support. Argument mapping is similar to other mapping activities such as mind mapping and concept mapping, but focuses on the logical, evidential or inferential relationships among propositions. Argument mapping is concerned with informal reasoning and “real world” argumentation and thus contrasts with the use of diagrammatic techniques in formal logic such as Venn diagrams.
Argument mapping is done in many different ways. Any such approach is usefully seen as making commitments at three different levels – theory, visual conventions, and technology.
First, argumentation theory and related fields such as informal logic, critical thinking, and rhetoric provide the theoretical framework for any style of argument mapping. The theory specifies the entities, relationships and values to be represented and provides rules or guidelines governing map construction. Conversely, developing an argument mapping scheme can force theoretical issues into the open and stimulate further research.
Second, an approach must adopt visual conventions for displaying arguments in accordance with the theory. From the range of dimensions such as shape, color, and line, the scheme designer must choose how to show, for example, that one proposition supports another. The conventions should yield maps that not only are theoretically adequate but also: communicative effectively, properly conveying to the reader the argument structure and associated issues; support interaction (construction and modification); and please the eye. It is challenging to satisfy all these constraints at once, and a good scheme will draw on fields such as information visualization and cognitive science.
Third, creating argument maps requires resources and technology of some kind. The most obvious and accessible technologies are pen and paper or whiteboards, but these quickly reveal their limitations: poor support for complex diagrams and modification of diagrams, and failure to constrain, scaffold or guide the user in any way. Serious argument mapping is now done using specially designed computer tools which have emerged over the past decade, such as Araucaria, Compendium, bCisive, and SEAS. Such tools largely overcome the disadvantages of manual technologies and offer a number of other advantages. An important recent development is the growing array of collaborative online argumentation tools such as Debategraph, though good user interfaces for online argument mapping remain an important challenge.
Figure 1: An example argument map. The map diagrams a portion of the argumentation found in an opinion piece by Paul Krugman. The map uses colors, lines, position in space, labels and icons to convey the structure of the argumentation. Note how the visual conventions display one distinctive feature of argumentation, “linked” premises (or “co-premises”), where multiple claims together constitute a single reason supporting another claim. Diagram created using the bCisive software.
Benefits of Argument Mapping
Argument mapping enthusiasts believe that argument mapping has numerous potential benefits. For the suitably skilled person, mapping a complex argument promotes clarity and insight, more rigorous and complete articulation, and more judicious evaluation. Teachers use argument mapping to help students acquire basic concepts, better understand how arguments are constructed, and enhance their reasoning skills. Argument mapping can be an effective way to improve general critical thinking skills. In the workplace, argument mapping can promote rational resolution in complex, fractious debates; improved communication of important arguments; and better decision making.
There is a simple, plausible case as to why argument mapping should have these benefits. Arguments can be complicated, sometimes extremely so. We know that well-designed visualizations help our minds cope with complexity. Hence, argument maps should help us deal with arguments. This can be easily demonstrated with simple exercises, but there is scope and need for rigorous empirical investigation.
History and Future of Argument Mapping
It appears that argument mapping did not emerge until the nineteenth century, with the first reference to the practice in a logic textbook by Richard Whately in 1836. The most notable early exponent was the legal theorist John Henry Wigmore, who developed detailed schemes for displaying legal evidence in the early twentieth century. In mid-century philosopher Stephen Toulmin developed a simple but influential argument diagramming scheme. With the rise of the informal logic and critical thinking movements, argument mapping began to make regular appearances in textbooks. Interest in argument mapping grew rapidly in the 1990s, due in large part to the increasing availability of computers and specially designed software. A substantial series of maps released by Robert Horn stimulated widespread interest in the technique. Recent years have been seeing argument mapping crossing over from academic or educational applications into the workplace (e.g. in intelligence analysis, and policy development) and popular use, particularly with the recent emergence of systems for online collaborative mapping.
The recent surge in argument mapping signposts an exciting development in humankind’s cognitive history. Computer-supported argument mapping offers a major change in the way we handle informal reasoning and argumentation. It is an instance of Douglas Engelbart’s vision of the augmentation of human intellect, whereby we develop technologies which can boost our individual and collective intelligence, by complementing our own cognitive machinery. Contemporary argument mapping approaches and tools are still relatively rudimentary. We can look forward to more sophisticated frameworks integrating more seamlessly with our biologically-endowed cognitive equipment, enhancing our capacity to deal with future intellectual challenges.
See also
Thinking, Rationality, Extended Mind, Graphical Organizers
Further Reading
Horn, R. et al. (1999) Can Computers Think? Macrovu.
Kirschner, P. J., Buckingham Shum, S. J., & Carr, C. S. (Eds.). (2003). Visualizing Argumentation: Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making. London: Springer-Verlag.
Krugman, P. (2009) Health Care Now. The New York Times, Jan 30 2009, p.A29.
Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. (Eds.) (2008). Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. Springer: London.
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See also:
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Posted in Argument Mapping | 4 Comments »
For quite a few years now Austhink Consulting has run a 3-day advanced argument mapping workshop using the JFK assassination as a case study. Specifically, we used the trial arguments by Jim Garrison, as presented in the Oliver Stone movie JFK, that there must have been a conspiracy.
We remained officially agnostic about the conclusion (i.e. whether there was or was not a conspiracy) though we leaned towards the position that the core arguments for conspiracy, while fascinating and good grist for an argument mapping workshop, are problematic. However it does take a very close analysis, of the kind made possible by rigorous argument mapping, to see clearly where and why they fail.
My Austhink colleague Paul Monk, who is a bit of a JFK buff and conspiracy sceptic, recently prepared a high-level hypothesis map providing the big picture – the major hypotheses (conspiracy, lone assassin, lone assassin plus accident), variants of those hypotheses, and an indication of the main arguments (a) for conspiracy, and (b) for Lee Harvey Oswald as the main assassin.
An image of the map showing first three levels only:
Download a pdf file of the whole map.
As with any complex map, the best way to view it is from within bCisive, where you can use zoom and hide/show and layout facilities to improve “viewability”.
Posted in Hypothesis mapping, JFK | Leave a Comment »
The argument mapping community generally deems the first occurrence of argument mapping to be in Richard Whately’s Elements of Logic textbook, first published in 1826. (See e.g. Reed, C., Walton, D. & Macagno, F. (2007) “Argument diagramming in logic, law and artificial intelligence”, Knowledge Engineering Review, 22 (1), pp87-109; p.93.)
To me it is implausible that there are no earlier examples, but I cannot point to any, despite having “kept an eye out” for a number of years.
Here, for the record, is that earliest occurrence:
This is the only diagram in Whately’s Elements of Logic which is close to an argument map. Note that it is an argument map schema or template rather than an argument map. Whately’s comment “Many students probably will find it a very clear and convenient mode of exhibiting the logical analysis of a course of argument, to draw it out in the form of a Tree, or Logical Division” suggests that the practice of argument mapping did exist at that time.
Posted in Argument Mapping | 8 Comments »
Victoria has been hit this week by the highest temperatures and most intense bushfires in the state’s recorded history. Around 200 dead, 1800 houses destroyed – and it is far from over.
As shown in this video, Jim Baruta was caught in the middle of it and managed to survive in a purpose-built bunker.
As it happens, he’s also the manager of Quist’s Coffee in Little Collins St. where I’ve been getting my daily fix for the past year or so.
Watch the video. It is truly extraordinary, and quite moving.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Frank Zdanowski emailed the following interesting “use case” for decision mapping/bCisive:
“In my work as a project manager, I hope to use your product to build decision maps to document the thought processes of the “why” of a project during preliminary planning. This way, when [if?] we reach a crisis point in project execution where the key stakeholders ask “why did we ever commit to doing it this way?”, I can bring out the decision map to show them exactly how we got to that point. Instead of using it to deflect blame, I hope to use the map to identify where we went wrong and refine our thinking about why we chose the approach we did, where we went off the rails, and how to get back on track. Over time, I hope that this will introduce more rigorous thinking in planning.”
Posted in bCisive, Decision mapping, Planning, Project management | 1 Comment »
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