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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Experimental Version of Argumentation Maps Now on Web
New Genre of Visual Diagrams Provide of Navigation for Philosophy Debates

Seattle-April 2, 2001-The innovative Mapping Great Debates series of argumentation maps has taken to the web, the publisher announced today. A detailed portion of one of the maps enables viewers to examine how multiple levels of subject matter can be navigated through the debate framework. This second level contains quotes from the protagonists' original articles, on which the summaries of the maps are based.

The new web portion is from map 6, entitled "Do Computers Have to Be Conscious to Think?" Viewers looking at the maps on the web, will see two regions of the map outlined in heavy red lines. These are: (1) the debates about "Can Computers be Conscious?" and (2) the functionalism debates "Can Functional States Generate Consciousness?" Clicking there will enable the student to view a total of 31 major "moves" in the argument-claims, rebuttals and counterrebuttals. They are presented in detail both in map form and in individual in-depth "source" pages that are hyperlinked.

Why do this when the maps are readily available in paper format? "Many students, teachers, and researchers have suggested to us that our whole enterprise might be better on the web," said Robert E. Horn, project director. "So we decided to try this experiment. We'll be interested in seeing what our users think. It will be a somewhat controversial approach because some have already noted that the web versions would not provide the ease of seeing the overall structure of the arguments provided by the paper versions. We'd like feedback on this experiment." Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on People, Computers, and Design at The Center for the Study of Language and Information.

"Our own view is that this form of argumentation maps on the web provide an important navigational infrastructure for understanding the emergence of a subject matter and its intellectual history. With our web site you can begin to envision how the depth of the unfolding of debates on the cutting edges of different disciplines and interdisciplinary issues can be summarized and mapped," said Horn.

Next-Link To Full Text Sources
"The obvious next step in this enterprise is to have the individual claims linked to not only the quote pages provided, but also to the full text of the original sources," Horn said. "You can view an example of this by clicking on the Turing claim on map 6. The link will take you to the full text of Alan Turing's 1950 article in Mind which is on the web at the Dartmouth College Philosophy Department site. We are seeking funds to enable us to do the full linking of maps-to-full-text on the web for our mapping project."

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