Use of hypertext for argumentation

Coming to the second aspect of hypertext you mentioned, the use of hypertext for argumentation. Can you tell us something about this?

David Kob - This is also something which has not been explored but it is of great interest to me. It seems to me that hypertext offers a possibility to present very complex structures of argumentation in ways that might potentially be clearer than you find in a linear book, because you can make the relationships between the parts of the argument by direct linkage of various kinds and you’re not constrained to put the argument piece by piece and hope that the reader remembers on page 50 the important point that was made on page 25. You can in fact link page 25 to page 50 and your reader can go back and forth directly. So there is a possibility that complex formal structures of argument could be more adequately expressed in hypertext. It is also possible that comments and questions and additions to such forms of argument could then be directly attached, in which case you would begin to develop a dialogue which would not simply be in the form of I say this, you say that, I say this, you say that.

But rather your comments would be attached to portions of what I said, and so we might have many streams of dialogue coming off the argument, and gradually a whole network would develop, which might be rather hard to follow because it would have many paths, but that network would include a whole debate about complex argument, counterarguments, and presumably would also include mapping that would tell you what was going on in such a collection.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
-PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor