Argument mapping is the visualisation of arguments according to “informal logic” – i.e. the logic structure used in everyday life – rather than formal logic – i.e. the kind that makes your mind boggle with its mathematical-like complexity, and the kind that made me fail my Philosophy exams at uni!
Informal logic is based around a four tiered structure:
- Your position – what you think overall
- Propositions - reasons that support your position
- Arguments - supporting arguments that back up each of your propositions
- Evidence – supporting evidence to back up your arguments
When put into use, you get something like this:
State their position “I think Man U are the best team in the Premiership”
State their propositions (reasons) “Because they’re the most successful on the pitch”
State supporting arguments “As they win the most silverware and have the best players”
State supporting evidence “In 2008 Man U won the Champions League and Ronaldo won best European Player of the year.”
From a practical perspective it’s often the case that in everyday arguments people don’t flesh out their arguments to the full four-tiers, however you’ll find that most people will instinctively use three tiers, often missing out supporting arguments, collapsing their arguments into their proposition or neglecting to provide supporting evidence.
I think it’s amazing that people intuitively argue in this way. That your everyday footy fan, has such a good mastery of informal logic. However, most intriguingly I think is the fact that most people don’t realise they structure their arguments in this way, and have no notion of what informal logic is.
The question is – What would happen if people were more aware of how they (and their argument sparing partners) knew how arguments were structured? The answer is, that better arguments / debates would take place. The reason for this is that in most cases people have the natural ability to form arguments, however people don’t have the natural ability to argue well. And that’s because people don’t understand how to pick apart another person’s argument – and instead shout back their argument in an unconnected way. They don’t understand which bit of the argument to attack, and how to attack it, even though they might know that they disagree with it, and have their own position.
That’s where argument mapping and aMap comes in. As visually showing people how arguments are structured should help people understand the underlying structure of their arguments. Argument mapping is a nice (visual) way of helping pull apart a mess of words, to show structure. And once someone’s grasped the four-tiered structure concept, they can then go to work unpicking another’s argument mid-debate, providing them with a much more powerful weapon than pure knowledge. As when it comes to arguments logic is stronger than knowledge.
So that’s my main fascination with argument mapping. I think the power of understanding the “behind the scenes structure” of how people structure their reasoning is huge. It’s clear most people have the ability to reason (use informal logic) pretty well (it’s an innate(ish) capacity), however the problem is that they don’t know how to use that reason – as they don’t know reason exists.
Hopefully aMap will change this. Check out the online version here (coming soon) and go forth and argue – or should that be “go forth and reason using informal logic!”
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
Great idea! However, as it stands this isn’t really argument mapping, rather it is position mapping. All this lets people do is state and support their positions. To truly capture an argument (as opposed to a position) you need all sides i.e. a way to capture counter propositions (reasons that counter the position), counter arguments and evidence for that. This would make the approach much more powerful by bringing in elements of Dialog Mapping.
I guess you are aware of Compendium?
http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/
[...] aMap’s based around “informal logic” the kind of logic that people (unknowingly) use in everyday [...]
[...] It’s an attempt at visualizing various stances on a subject, which can be almost anything; from simple comparisons such as “Masala or Vindaloo” to questions such as “Should agencies launch their own products?” It’s based on informal logic; you can read more about the concept behind the project in the authors’ blog post. [...]
[...] resource that maps out complex debates in a simple visual format. The site also offers advice about the what and why of argument mapping–information that’s sure to help teachers and students refine their thinking. By helping [...]
[...] sure to read founder Chris Quigley’s blog posts on What And Why and How to Win Arguments And Influence [...]
[...] to a blog post by Chris Quigley of Delib (part of Team Rubber) , aMap is the visualization of arguments according [...]