Ability to map complex theories

What?

Changes are made to the way that Argument Mapping is normally done to enable one to visually display complex theories clearly and reveal their underlying structure. See Theory Mapping and Epistemology for a brief discussion of the structure of knowledge.


Why?

In outlining complex theories, there are likely to be premises that support more than one argument. For instance, a conspiracy theory is likely to have premises about the extent to which one can trust government that will be repeatedly called upon in justifying arguments for not taking official evidence at face value. The standard practice in Argument Mapping is to keep strictly to a hierarchical approach in which arguments are ‘trees’ where the branches radiate outwards and never connect to each other. So if a premise is used to support more than one argument, it is simply duplicated. The key reason for this is aesthetic, in order to prevent having lines crossing over boxes (e.g. see the article ‘Argument Mapping and Analysis of Competing Hypotheses’ by Tim van Gelder here). It can also make an argument easier to read, since all of the premises are close together. This makes sense for presenting simple arguments, but for Theory Mapping it is better to put each premise in only one place, since: a) any premise has to be justified, and it would be confusing and space-consuming to have to duplicate the justifications too; b) for the measurement of coherence, a premise should only be counted once; and c) if a premise is used in more than one argument, it is good to make it explicit so that the structure of the theory can be more clearly seen, and to assist in weighting premises according to their importance to the theory.

How?

I suggest that the best way to do this while minimizing cross-cutting lines and maximizing clarity, is for a Theory Map to consist of different layers of hierarchical trees (rather than a potentially messy web of connections). The first top layer is for the argument trees justifying reasons and premises that are only used once. The second layer is for any premises that are used twice or more in the first layer. The third layer is for any premises that are used twice or more in the second layer, and so on. The premises and arguments in the lowest layer would therefore be the most fundamental, at the centre of the theory or belief system.

The premises at the top of the second layer would be linked to the arguments in the first layer by lines which would run down the sides of the trees, and so avoid crossing over any boxes. Functionality could also be provided in the software so that if you click on the top of the argument in the first layer, the line down to the premise in the second layer and the premise itself would be highlighted (such as you have with cell formulas in Excel). So it would still be easy to read the argument.

As experience is gained from Theory Mapping about the structure of theories, and software is improved, it may be that even better ways can be developed for presenting maps e.g. where the software automatically structures the map to fit the structure of the theory.
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