Deliberation, schmeliberation: Enoch’s indispensability argument

Structuralism and the Indispensability Argument

I distill the indispensability argument to four general charateristics, which yield six unfortunate consequences, unwelcome characteristics of the objects yielded by the argument. The indispensabilist’s objects are not mathematical, in any traditional sense, but merely empirical posits. Then, I characterize a form of structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics which relies on an indispensabi...

E Pluribus Putnams Unum: Hilary Putnam and the Indispensability Argument

In this paper, I argue that the indispensability argument unifies all of Hilary Putnam’s diverse work in the philosophy of mathematics. I also argue that his version of the indispensability argument does not justify knowledge of mathematical objects. I first characterize indispensability arguments in the philosophy of mathematics, distilling them to four essential characteristics. I show that t...

Improving online deliberation with argument network visualization

Social media are increasingly used to support online debate and facilitate citizens’ engagement in policy and decision-making. Nevertheless the online dialogue spaces we see on the Web today typically provide flat listings of comments, or threads that can be viewed by ‘subject’ line. These are fundamentally chronological views which offer no insight into the logical structure of the ideas, such...

Mixed initiative argument in public deliberation

This paper aims to demonstrate the connection between argument structures, such as those that are created and manipulated by argument mapping tools, and argumentative dialogues, such as those that form a part of online deliberative processes. Our approach is to use recent advances in argument-based knowledge representation, and to tie these to tools we have developed that support argument mappi...

Rational Actors , Political Argument , and Democratic Deliberation