An overview of formal models of argumentation and their application in philosophy

Argumentation is the process of supporting claims with grounds and defending them against attack. In the last decades argumentation has become an important topic in philosophy and artificial intelligence. In philosophy, the criticisms of Toulmin and Perelman of formal logic in the 1950s and 1960s gave rise to the field of informal logic, which studies informal models of reasoning and argumentation. In artificial intelligence, formal models of argumentation have been proposed as models of commonsense reasoning and multi-agent conflict resolution. This paper discusses how the formal models resulting from this research can clarify philosophical problems and issues, including those raised in the field of informal logic. An important point will be that while formal logic in the days of Toulmin and Perelman only focused on mathematical reasoning, non-mathematical forms of reasoning can still be formalised.