Assessing Arguments in ReasonSpace

To assess an argument, you must assess its inference and all its premises. ReasonSpace walks you through the process of assessing arguments on a map. When you're looking at a published map, there will be a button to assess it in the upper right corner of the screen.

When you're in assessment mode, you'll see an area on the left side of the screen with scales for all the items in the map. (In some views, only portions of the map and a subset of the scales will be visible.) Clicking on an item or its scale will open that scale in an edit box in the lower left corner of the screen, where you can place a slider on the scale to assess the element.

Assess each premise according to its epistemic status, and assess each inference according to its strength—i.e. how strongly it would support their conclusions if all of their premises were certain.

Once all the premises and the inference for a given argument have been assessed, the system will calculate a strength for the argument as a whole, and if this is the only argument for its conclusion it will determine the epistemic status of the conclusion accordingly.

If there are multiple arguments for a conclusion, the system will set the conclusion to the strength of the strongest argument for it. You still have the option to set the strength higher, because sometimes the strength of multiple arguments can compound to yield a stronger overall case for a conclusion than any one argument does alone. (You'll have to use your judgment to determine whether this is so in any particular case.)

Objections and Counterarguments

Objections and counterarguments have the effect of putting an upper limit on the assessment of the items to which they point. The stronger the objection or counter-argument is, the lower the upper limit is.