[Textop] Debate Guide Project

[Brendel Matyas]

Larry,

So there is one big question for me. Do we do Textop and DGP 
separatelly or not?

Lets see the pros and cons.

A) Pro: 

(i) DGP could use the chunks of Textop and structure it from the 
perspective of different debates.
(ii) I think that the motivation behind DGP is much bigger then behind 
Textop. If I am right, the DGP could be the motivation engine of Textop.
(iii) We do not need to copy, synchronize the text chunks.

B) Cons:
(i) Maybe the structure gets messy.
(ii) Maybe DGP explodes quickly but Textop will be forgotten. i.e. we will 
get a lot of chunks from different books, but none of the books will be 
outlined completly.


I suggest to make this decision first. If we decide to do the projects 
separatelly, I suggest to have different prototype projects as well.



Let me clarify one detail in my vision:

>An argument is
> usually also a
> thesis, which can be debated.

Lets take an example. A big question.:)

So there could be for example a question node1: "Does God exist?"

thesis node1: "Yes, God exists"

argument node1: "The Universe is fine tuned for living."

Ok, but this argument is itself also a thesis, which can be debated.

So argument node1=thesis node2

and question node2="Is the Universe fine tuned for living?"


An argument for thesis node2 could be:

argument node2="Life is probably only possible on carbon base."

But this is a thesis, which can be debated.

And so on. Somewhere at the end there are level nodes. Level nodes 
may be:

- Some kind of fact, which is not debated, it is weel known, there is a 
consensus on it.  For example: "Life on Earth is carbon based". This is a 
fact, which nobody argues against. We do not need any reference for 
this.

- Some kind of fact, which is not so well known, and needs a reference. 
For example: "Certain type of amino acids may be formed in meteors 
spontaneously." Here we may need a reference to a publication.

- Simple and weel known analytical truth, which are not factual, but 
true. For example: "In Euclidean geometry the thesys of Pythagoras is 
true." Usually we do not need a reference for such old mathematical 
theses, only for the not so well known new ones.


This results in a hierarchical structure of theses. 

You may prefer to put all this stuff to the first node and do no hierarchy. 
That is simpler to read until the structure of the argumentation is 
simple, but it gots messy, when the structure of the argumentation 
gets complicated. 

In the case of "Does God exist?" I am sure, we will reach quickly a very 
messy argumentation.:) I would prefer to keep it explicitly structured.

Matthias

________________________________________________________________
Most vásároljon [origo] klikk befektetési alapokat, és hosszú távon mentesül az adófizetés alól!
http://www.klikkbank.hu/befektetes/index.html