This paper argues that an increased application of quasi-experimental and experimental techniques will improve understanding about core environmental economics questions. This argument is supported by a review of the limitations of associational evidence in assessing causal hypotheses. The paper also discusses the benefits of experiments and quasi-experiments, outlines some quasi-experimental m...

The paper aims to bring together and unify two traditions in studying dialogue as a game: dialogical logic introduced by Lorenzen; and persuasion dialogue games as specified by Prakken. The first approach allows the representation of formal dialogues in which the validity of argument is the topic discussed. The second tradition has focused on natural dialogues examining, e.g., informal fallacie...

Argument visualisation (AV) tools facilitate structured debates utilising elements such as issues, positions and arguments. In this way, AV tools seem promising for improving eParticipation e.g. by avoiding repetition and enhancing clarity in debates. In this paper we present and discuss citizens’ opinion on utilising an AV platform for eParticipation, specifically for discussing the emerging t...

This essay is about how four deeply important Kantian ideas can significantly illuminate some essentially intertwined issues in philosophical theology, philosophical logic, the metaphysics of agency, and above all, morality. These deeply important Kantian ideas are: (1) Kant’s argument for the impossibility of the Ontological Argument, (2) Kant’s first “postulate of pure practical reason,” immo...

Social psychology shows that the effect of a persuasive argument depends on characteristics of the person to be persuaded, including the person’s involvement with the topic and the discrepancy between the person’s current position on the topic and the argument’s position. Via a series of experiments, this paper provides insight into how the receiver’s position can be modelled computationally, a...

This paper is about the situation in which an author (writer or speaker) presents a deductively invalid argument, but the addressee aims at a charitable interpretation and has reason to assume that the author intends to present a valid argument. How can he go about interpreting the author’s reasoning as enthymematically valid? We suggest replacing the usual find-the-missingpremise approaches by...

Guided by the theory of interpretive validity argument, this study investigated the plausibility and accuracy of five sets of warrants which were deemed crucial to the validity of a selfassessment (SA) scale designed and used in a local EFL context. Methodologically, this study utilized both the Rasch measurement theory and structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the five warrants and the...

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is perhaps the most solid and widly discussed argument for a caused creation of the universe. The usual objections to the argument mainly focus on the second premise. In this paper we discuss the dependency of the first premise on the topological structure of the space-time manifold adopted for the underlying cosmological model. It is shown that in chronology-vio...

Diagrammatic models of argument have grown in prominence in recent years. While they have been applied in a number of tutoring contexts, it has not yet been shown that student-produced diagrams can be used to effectively grade students or predict their future performance. We show that manually-assigned diagram grades and automatic structural features of argument diagrams can be used to predict ...

Collaborative Computer-Supported Argument Visualization (CCSAV) has often been proposed as an alternative over more conventional, mainstream platforms for online discussion (e.g., online forums and wikis). CCSAV tools require users to contribute to the creation of a joint artifact (argument map) instead of contributing to a conversation. In this paper we assess empirically the effects of this f...