When translating a prose argument into an argument map, fidelity in translation is crucial in litigation. This is why it is essential that an argument visual language has sufficient expressiveness. A mismatch in semantic range between the prose and the visual language can result in confusion in the judge or jury.

For example, the visual language Rationale™ pyramid can create such confusion because it lacks sufficient expressiveness in depicting objections. The Austhink tutorial describes objections as depicted in Rationale™ pyramid:

“Objections and reasons are very similar; it is just that while reasons present evidence supporting the contention, objections present evidence against it. Roughly, an objection ’says why the contention wouldn’t be true.’” “Technically, an objection is [a] set of claims working together to provide evidence that another claim is false.” http://www.austhink.com/reason/tutorials/Tutorial_1/3_Objections/objections.htm 

The obvious problem is that an objection to a claim in litigation is not always that the claim is “false.” Such a limited bivalent (i.e., true or false) expressiveness does not account for other possible types of objections. For example, a more rich list of possible objections to a claim could include (WAVICIF):

  • Weak
  • Ambiguous
  • Vague
  • Inconsistent
  • Conditional
  • Irrelevant (This is different that arguing that a co-premise is false making the other co-premise with no objection attached irrelevant.)
  • False

To illustrate the lack of sufficient objection expressiveness in Rationale™ pyramid, an objection from the Austhink Consulting report “Why Tanks? Why Abrams?” will be used.

What is the claim to which this objection (consisting co-premises 1A-a and 1A-b) applies? One indicator of a problem is that the claim objected to is not obvious. In this instance, this uncertainty is caused by more than just a lack of expressivenss in the visual language.

First, this particular objection lacks inferential rigor. The two premises are not co-premises that need each other to connect to a claim. The application of the No Danglers rule makes that apparent. This lack of rigor can also be seen in the actual map.

While the visual language indicates that the co-premises should support the falsity of the claim, namely, “The Abrams M1A1 AIM is not too heavy to be used in the soft terrain of the Asia-Pacific region,” the prose of the co-premises suggests a more nuanced objection. For example, co-premise 1A-a indicates that the concept “heaviness” is not determinative of the tank’s suitability in soft terrain. This lack of congruence between the visual language and the prose could cause confusion in the judge or juror.

In this example, there are a number of possible solutions. First, the claim that the tank is not too heavy, although not supported by the above co-premises, is actually a good one as shown below.

The more fundamental problem with the design of the visual language Rationale™ pyramid is that it does not permit the claim that is actually supported by the objection to be explicitly stated. Rationale™ path resolves this deficit in expressiveness.

Other visual languages such as the ones used with Carneades and Araucaria are similarly limited in expressiveness. To the contrary, the Inference Path visual language relying on the ADEPT™ (i.e., argument defeasible essential predication transitivity) model of inference has the requisite expressiveness.