Argument Content and Argument Source: An Exploration

Abstract

Argumentation is pervasive in everyday life. Understanding what makes a strong argument is therefore of both theoretical and practical interest. One factor that seems intuitively important to the strength of an argument is the reliability of the source providing it. Whilst traditional approaches to argument evaluation are silent on this issue, the Bayesian approach to argumentation (Hahn & Oaksford, 2007) is able to capture important aspects of source reliability. In particular, the Bayesian approach predicts that argument content and source reliability should interact to determine argument strength. In this paper, we outline the approach and then demonstrate the importance of source reliability in two empirical studies. These experiments show the multiplicative relationship between the content and the source of the argument predicted by the Bayesian framework.Résumé: L'argumentation est employée couramment dans la vie de tous les jours. Il est donc dans notre intérêt théorique et pratique de comprendre ce qui rend un argument puissant. Un facteur qui semble intuitivement important qui contribue à cette puissance est la fiabilité des sources d'information employées dans un argument. Quoique les approches traditionnelles sur l'évaluation d'un argument soient silencieuses sur ce sujet, l'approche bayesienne peut apporter quelques aspects importants sur l'évaluation de la fiabilité des sources: elle prédit que le contenu d'un argument et la fiabilité d'une source devraient agir un sur l'autre pour déterminer la puissance d'un argument. Dans cet article nous traçons les grandes lignes de cette approche et ensuite démontrons dans deux études empiriques l'importance d'évaluer la fiabilité d'une source d'information. Ces expériences dé-montrent une relation multiplicative entre le contenu et la source d'un argument, qui est prédite par l'approche bayesienne.

A normative framework for argument quality: argumentation schemes with a Bayesian foundation

“…12 Moreover, multiple arguments may interact to produce sub-additive or superadditive effects. Hahn et al (2009), for instance, show-both from a Bayesian normative perspective and with empirical, experimental results from psychological studies-that source reliability and strength of evidence interact. Reliable sources benefit from stronger as opposed to weaker evidence, but this effect is very much smaller for less reliable sources.…”

Rational argument, rational inference

“…The results of one such study are shown in Figure 2, where the visible differences in ratings for positive and negative arguments correspond to a statistically significant difference in perceived strength. That same study also examined whether people were sensitive to two other fundamental intuitions that have a normative basis in probability theory, namely that evidence from a more reliable source should have greater strength (on this issue see also, Hahn, Harris, and Corner 2009;Hahn, Oaksford, and Harris 2012;Lagnado, Fenton and Neil, this volume), and that the degree of prior belief someone has in a claim should influence how convinced they become in light of a given piece of evidence. However, whether or not key normative factors of argument strength are reflected in people's basic intuitions is not the only interesting question in this context.…”

Probabilities, causation, and logic programming in conditional reasoning: reply to Stenning and Van Lambalgen (2016)

“…In sum, our argument was that what is normal and what is abnormal has to be learned; and it is learned by discovering, by whatever means, the causal structure of our world. As Sternberg and McClelland (2010) have recently showed, we can learn the nature and efficacy of causes either inferentially or by pathway strengthening or, of course, we can just accept the testimony of a reliable informant (Hahn, Harris, & Corner, 2009;Hahn, Oaksford, & Harris, 2013;.…”