The philosophical origins and tradition of argument mapping In the
Elements of Logic, published in 1826 and issued in many subsequent editions, Archbishop
Richard Whately gave probably the first form of an argument map, introducing it with the suggestion that "many students probably will find it a very clear and convenient mode of exhibiting the logical analysis of the course of argument, to draw it out in the form of a Tree, or Logical Division". However, the technique did not become widely used, possibly because for complex arguments, it involved much writing and rewriting of the premises. Legal philosopher and theorist
John Henry Wigmore produced maps of legal arguments using numbered premises in the early 20th century, based in part on the ideas of 19th century philosopher
Henry Sidgwick who used lines to indicate relations between terms.
Anglophone argument diagramming in the 20th century Dealing with the failure of
formal reduction of informal argumentation, English speaking
argumentation theory developed diagrammatic approaches to informal reasoning over a period of fifty years.
Monroe Beardsley proposed a form of argument diagram in 1950. identified several elements to an argument which have been generalized. The
Toulmin diagram is widely used in educational critical teaching. Whilst Toulmin eventually had a significant impact on the development of
informal logic he had little initial impact and the Beardsley approach to diagramming arguments along with its later developments became the standard approach in this field. Toulmin introduced something that was missing from Beardsley's approach. In Beardsley, "arrows link reasons and conclusions (but) no support is given to the implication itself between them. There is no theory, in other words, of inference distinguished from logical deduction, the passage is always deemed not controversial and not subject to support and evaluation". Toulmin introduced the concept of
warrant which "can be considered as representing the reasons behind the inference, the backing that authorizes the link". Beardsley's approach was refined by Stephen N. Thomas, whose 1973 book
Practical Reasoning In Natural Language introduced the term
linked to describe arguments where the premises necessarily worked together to support the conclusion. However, the actual distinction between dependent and independent premises had been made prior to this. Whereas Beardsley had said "At first, write out the statements...after a little practice, refer to the statements by number alone" Scriven advocated clarifying the meaning of the statements, listing them and then using a tree diagram with numbers to display the structure. Missing premises (unstated assumptions) were to be included and indicated with an alphabetical letter instead of a number to mark them off from the explicit statements. Scriven introduced counterarguments in his diagrams, which Toulmin had defined as rebuttal. This also enabled the diagramming of "balance of consideration" arguments. In 1998 a series of large-scale argument maps released by
Robert E. Horn stimulated widespread interest in argument mapping.
Development of computer-supported argument visualization with an example path through it: all Con-argument boxes and some Pros were emptied to illustrate an example path.
Human–computer interaction pioneer
Douglas Engelbart, in a famous 1962 technical report on
intelligence augmentation, envisioned in detail something like argument-mapping software as an integral part of future
intelligence-augmenting computer interfaces: In the middle to late 1980s,
hypertext software applications that supported argument visualization were developed, including
NoteCards and
gIBIS; the latter generated an on-screen graphical hypertextual map of an
issue-based information system, a model of argumentation developed by Werner Kunz and
Horst Rittel in the 1970s. In the 1990s,
Tim van Gelder and colleagues developed a series of software applications that permitted an argument map's premises to be fully stated and edited in the diagram, rather than in a legend. Van Gelder's first program, Reason!Able, was superseded by two subsequent programs, bCisive and Rationale. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, many other software applications were developed for argument visualization. By 2013, more than 60 such software systems existed. In a 2010 survey of computer-supported argumentation, Oliver Scheuer and colleagues noted that one of the differences between these software systems is whether collaboration is supported. In their survey, single-user argumentation systems included Convince Me, iLogos, LARGO, Athena,
Araucaria, and Carneades; small group argumentation systems included Digalo, QuestMap,
Compendium, Belvedere, and AcademicTalk; community argumentation systems included
Debategraph and
Collaboratorium. As of 2020, the commercial website
Kialo is the most widely adopted argumentation-based deliberation system with an argument-map interface. On Kialo, users can usually vote on the debate question to express their overall conclusion about the subject, with the average and a bar chart of these votes being included at the top of every debate. Moreover, users can rate the impact individual arguments at the top level had on their conclusion. In branches beneath the top level, users can likewise rank the impact any individual argument has on the claim above it. The
rationale (i.e. the main causal arguments) for their vote on a thesis or an argument is not recorded if these reasons are missing in the claims beneath it or if these have not been rated by the same users. This system of transparent voting represents Kialo's algorithm of collective determination of argument weights and theses' veracities, In the context of historical-political education, researcher Oliver Held identified at least five key components of historical judgment that can be implemented easily in Kialo: perspectivity, levels of relevance, interdependence, multi-causality and assessments. ==Applications==