Scholars from 18 countries who study how reasoning and arguments are and should be used gathered at the University of Windsor June 6-9th for the conference, Dissensus and the Search for Common Ground.
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Topics covered in these Proceedings include emotion and argument, appeals to fear, children’s arguing, argument in self-help books, dealing with multiple viewpoints, dealing with deep disagreement, political argument, multicultural arguments, humour and argument, the use of metaphors in arguing, negotiation and newspaper editorials—among many others in the 90 papers that were presented at the conference. Papers range from the technical (e.g., “Dialectical profiles and indicators of argumentative moves”; “Collective circularity and a problem of infinite regress”) to the practical (e.g., “Building a winning team: developing arguments in criminal cases”; “Reasoning in dispute resolution cases”; “Reasoning from conflicting sources”). The three keynote presentations (Dale Hample, University of Western Illinois, Michael Gilbert, York University, and Christian Kock, University of Copenhagen) all address in some way the current state of argumentation studies and ways to bring perspectives more in line with each other.
The Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA) organized the conference, with support from the University of Windsor’s Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the University of Windsor. The organizers also received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to help fund the conference.
This was the seventh OSSA-organized argumentation conference since 1995, the third held at the University of Windsor, and the biggest and most multidisciplinary so far. Altogether more than 120 scholars took part, including presenters, commentators, and chairs.
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It was a truly international conference. 45 per cent of the participants were from places other than Canada (25 per cent) and the United States (30 per cent). 35 per cent came from a dozen different countries in Europe (Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Scotland, Macedonia, Belgium and Poland). The Netherlands sent the biggest contingent after the U.S. and Canada—a dozen scholars. Another 10 per cent came from Central and South America (Chile, Columbia, and Mexico). Three Israeli scholars represented the Middle East.
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A number of doctoral students had papers accepted for the regular program in the blind refereeing process and seven of them competed for the J. Anthony Blair prize for a graduate student essay judged by a panel to be especially commendable (being awarded for the fourth time), which came with a $300 cheque. There were two winners this year: Linda Carozza of York University in Toronto and Paula Olmos of the Spanish Open University. Also, seven graduate students participated in the pre-conference Tindale Graduate Workshop on June 6th, including three from Windsor and one from McMaster in Canada, and three from Copenhagen, Denmark.
This OSSA conference was more multi-disciplinary than the previous six. Although the majority of the participants were scholars from philosophy or communications, altogether 14 disciplines are represented on the program, including education, English, rhetoric, logic, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, public policy, political science, anthropology, classics and French.
