Mapping Complex Debates: A Case Study on Austhink Rationale

Argumentation is considered the most important way humans can deal with conflicting information (Besnard & Hunter, 2008) by finding and organizing justifications for proposed claims. Argumentation is widely used in several domains such as law, politics and management (as decision support). Consequently, for any domain in which a structured argument may be developed, a computer system may be used to aid the process (eg. by storing facts, automatically evaluating arguments or visually representing argument maps). The current paper presents a case study on creating argument visualizations (argument maps) for complex arguments, using the Austhink Rationale software.