Argument and Argumentation

Argument is a central concept for philosophy. Philosophers rely heavily on arguments to justify claims, and these practices have been motivating reflections on what arguments and argumentation are for millennia. Moreover, argumentative practices are also pervasive elsewhere; they permeate scientific inquiry, legal procedures, education, and political institutions. The study of argumentation is an inter-disciplinary field of inquiry, involving philosophers, language theorists, legal scholars, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, and political scientists, among many others. 

An argument can be defined as a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. Alternatively, an argument can be viewed as a complex speech act consisting of one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favor of the conclusion), an act of concluding, and a stated or implicit marker (“hence”, “therefore”) that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises (Hitchcock 2007).^[1] The relation of support between premises and conclusion can be cashed out in different ways: the premises may guarantee the truth of the conclusion, or make its truth more probable; the premises may imply the conclusion; the premises may make the conclusion more acceptable (or assertible).

For theoretical purposes, arguments may be considered as freestanding entities, abstracted from their contexts of use in actual human activities. But depending on one’s explanatory goals, there is also much to be gained from considering arguments as they in fact occur in human communicative practices. The term generally used for instances of exchange of arguments is argumentation. In what follows, the convention of using “argument” to refer to structures of premises and conclusion, and “argumentation” to refer to human practices and activities where arguments occur as communicative actions will be adopted.

Read the rest here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/argument/

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An argument is a structured set of propositions in which one or more premises are intended to support a conclusion, while argumentation refers to the activity in which such arguments are produced, exchanged, assessed, and revised within communicative and practical contexts. Arguments are abstract objects that can be evaluated for validity or strength, whereas argumentation is a social and cognitive practice governed by norms, goals, and situational constraints. Clarifying this distinction is essential, because many disagreements arise not from the content of arguments but from differing expectations about how argumentation ought to function.

Arguments can be classified according to the kind of support their premises provide. In deductive arguments, the truth of the premises, together with valid reasoning, guarantees the truth of the conclusion. Inductive arguments, by contrast, support their conclusions only probabilistically, typically by generalizing from observed cases or identifying regularities. Abductive arguments aim to infer the most plausible explanation for a given set of observations rather than a guaranteed or statistically supported conclusion. Analogical arguments rely on relevant similarities between cases to justify extending a claim from a familiar domain to a less familiar one. Not all arguments succeed in providing genuine support; fallacies are recurring patterns of defective reasoning in which the premises fail to justify the conclusion, often despite their persuasive appearance.

Argumentation itself takes different forms depending on its purpose and context. In adversarial argumentation, participants aim to defend positions and defeat opposing views, whereas cooperative argumentation emphasizes mutual understanding and shared problem-solving. Argumentation can also be understood as an epistemic practice, since it plays a central role in forming, testing, and revising beliefs and knowledge claims. In consensus-oriented settings, the goal of argumentation is not merely persuasion but the achievement of agreement based on reasons acceptable to all parties involved. Argumentation further functions as a tool for managing conflict by providing structured, reason-based alternatives to force, authority, or manipulation, thereby allowing disagreements to be addressed without escalating into violence or coercion.

Across fields of inquiry and social practices, argumentation plays different but related roles. Argumentation theory studies the structure of arguments, the norms governing argumentative exchanges, and the criteria by which arguments are evaluated. In artificial intelligence and computer science, formal models of argumentation are used to design reasoning systems, support decision-making, and make automated conclusions explainable. Cognitive science and psychology investigate how humans actually reason and argue, including the role of heuristics, biases, and informal reasoning strategies. In language and communication studies, argumentation is analyzed as a form of discourse shaped by linguistic choices, pragmatic context, and conversational norms. In specific social practices such as law, science, politics, and education, argumentation is governed by domain-specific standards of evidence, relevance, and authority.

Further work on argumentation addresses issues that go beyond logical structure alone. The concept of argumentative injustice highlights how power relations, social identity, and credibility affect whose arguments are heard or dismissed. Research on emotions and argumentation shows that emotions are not merely obstacles to rational reasoning but often influence how arguments are understood and evaluated. Cross-cultural perspectives reveal that argumentative norms and expectations vary across societies, challenging the assumption that a single model of rational argumentation applies universally. Finally, the rise of the internet has transformed argumentation by amplifying scale, speed, and visibility, while also introducing new problems such as polarization, misinformation, and algorithmic influence on public debate.

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Wikipedia

Argumentation theory is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real-world settings.

Argumentation includes various forms of dialogue such as deliberation and negotiation which are concerned with collaborative decision-making procedures. It also encompasses eristic dialogue, the branch of social debate in which victory over an opponent is the primary goal, and didactic dialogue used for teaching. This discipline also studies the means by which people can express and rationally resolve or at least manage their disagreements.

Argumentation is a daily occurrence, such as in public debate, science, and law. For example in law, in courts by the judge, the parties and the prosecutor, in presenting and testing the validity of evidences. Also, argumentation scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify decisions they have made irrationally.

Argumentation is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, description, and narration.

Read the rest here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory