This is our story of why Logic Guaranteed was formed.
The DCIT logical reasoning curriculum development story begins with Joseph’s work as a trial and appellate attorney for the Oregon Department of Justice contesting in court the market value of major airlines (e.g., Delta Airlines, American Airlines, etc.), railroads (e.g., Union Pacific Railroad), utilities, and major industrial properties (e.g., computer chip plants). Over the years, he was frustrated with the quality of the logical reasoning demonstrated by his trial expert witnesses (e.g., economists, statisticians, valuation experts, financial theorists, corporate strategic planners, university professors, etc.). He searched for an answer. He began with a very long and deep dive into scholarly argument theory and a thorough examination of his own law school logical argumentation teaching experience. He came to realize that the problem did not originate with those experts or his law school students.
One problem was that the customary methods of logical reasoning taught (e.g., deduction, induction, formal logic) often lacked the ease-of-use, applicability, robustness, and rigor to address the challenges of many real-world complex arguments. The inadequacies of standard logics (e.g., deduction and induction) for much of practical real-world reasoning is not a controversial position among argumentation scholars. In fact, it was a motivating factor, in part, for the development of “informal logic” and its dissemination in college classes starting in earnest in the 1970’s. But informal logic never produced the fundamental change needed. And he also observed that the typical teaching methods of logical reasoning were failing college students. Scholarly educational research supported, and still support, these failings.
[Note, there are now innovative teaching methods, such as those used by Minerva University. These include an active learning pedagogy with deliberate practice, a multi-dimensional assessment approach, and the integration of the durable skills of constructing arguments and analyzing inferences across disciplines and contexts with a clear taxonomy of these learning outcomes. But as powerful as those innovations are, they are insufficient by themselves to resolve the most fundamental root problem of this deficit in logical reasoning high mastery by most students.]
Joseph realized that what was needed was a single, user-friendly, simple, and universal argument structure and universal mode of inference for constructing complex real world logical arguments and rigorously analyzing inferences regardless of their complexity or domain. The problem was, as he was to learn, that one did not yet exist.
Joseph started to search for a better core curriculum to increase for his trial expert witnesses and law school students their sub-competencies of constructing real-world logical arguments and analyzing inferences. His first stop on this passionate journey was exploring the use of “argument mapping” to visually depict the path of reasoning in arguments.
As part of that exploration, he tested that argument visualization approach before trial and appellate courts using argument maps in courtroom exhibits and legal briefs. He also designed the curriculum and taught an advanced “Factual Argument” law school class for Lewis & Clark Law School. In that law school course, the law school students used specialized argument mapping software to achieve their learning outcomes.
He also became an Associate Consultant with Austhink, a leading critical thinking and argument mapping consulting/training firm affiliated with the University of Melbourne. During that time, he undertook a valuable mentorship in conventional “argument mapping” with Dr. Tim van Gelder, a founder of Austhink, who is a leading critical thinking and argument visualization proponent.
Joseph found that argument mapping was a good first step in solving the problem of inadequate reasoning skills in students and trial expert witnesses. The graphical representation of the inferential network provides many documented benefits in learning logical reasoning and effectively communicating arguments.
But, he was also well aware that the argument mapping approach still had many deficiencies. For one, it was still just too easy to construct an illogical argument because of its insufficient rigor and robustness. An argument map, by itself, could not overcome a student’s lack of mastery in understanding the universal structure of logical argument.
[Joseph has subsequently written extensively on the critical weaknesses of conventional argument mapping designs such as the one used in the critical thinking argument mapping curriculum currently promulgated by ThinkerAnalytix (a nonprofit which was spun off from the Harvard University Department of Philosophy) as an argument analysis curriculum for other universities.]
With the insufficiency of argument mapping made evident, it was time for Joseph to literally go back to the drawing board. He began studying the countless number of argument maps that he had created for courts and for teaching university classes, both law and graduate school, looking for a universal underlying argument structure and a single universal mode of inference that was intuitive based on our childhood cognitive development. It made sense to him that one existed because there are many people who are great at logical reasoning who have never formally studied it.
Eventually, he had the eureka moment. He discovered, through the process of “pattern recognition,” that there actually was a single universal argument structure and a single underlying universal mode of inference across all those different argument structures, modes of inference, and subject matter and contextual domains. He named it Defeasible Class-Inclusion Transitivity – DCIT /’dē.sit/.
Joseph realized that his next step would need to be getting DCIT scholarly articles accepted in leading peer-reviewed Argumentation journals to show academic support for this approach. And this would require that he first find the argumentation theoretical underpinnings from which his “pattern recognition” discovery was an obvious important theoretical advance.
He finally found those theoretical origins in the ground-breaking and inspiring theoretical work of Professors Fred Sommers and George Englebretsen on term-functor logic, part of “The New Syllogistic.” That research path draws ideas from Aristotle’s syllogistic, Scholastic logicians, Leibniz, and the 19th century British algebraists. The Defeasible Class-Inclusion Transitivity system of logic in our approach extends from that work
After reviewing his unpublished work demonstrating the universal applicability of DCIT, Joseph was invited to submit a manuscript by Professor John Woods, who was the Editor of a Special Edition on Relevancy for The Journal of Logic & Computation, which was accepted for publication. In this article, he demonstrated, in part, how DCIT could accommodate the different formal logic patterns.
Also, after reviewing his scholarly work on DCIT, he was subsequently invited to submit a manuscript on the universal applicability of DCIT by Professor Peter Tillers, Founding Editor for the Oxford Journal, Law, Probability & Risk which was accepted. In this article, he further demonstrated the universality of DCIT for handling any form of argument.
His DCIT scholarly work was also recognized by Professor Douglas Walton, who was a world-leading argumentation theorist. As a result of his DCIT discovery, Professor Walton asked him to be one of three reviewers for his draft book manuscript “Burden of Proof, Presumption, and Argumentation” published by Cambridge University Press. In the Acknowledgement Section of that book, Professor Walton recognized his contribution for “making many helpful comments and corrections.” The DCIT argumentation approach enabled him to make these contribution to this world-class scholar’s work.
With the theoretical validity accepted by scholarly journals, Joseph began successfully using the DCIT logical reasoning method in his trial and appellate work as a Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Oregon Department of Justice in the Oregon Supreme Court and the Oregon Tax Court. The judges were deeply impressed with the quality of reasoning from the DCIT approach. Winning became much easier.
In order to most effectively teach the DCIT argumentation approach for a mastery level, he researched different approaches and finally found the scholarly work of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff on conceptual metaphors and embodied cognition. These models frame human conceptualization and reasoning in terms of embodied imagination. Joseph designed an embodied metaphor and visual language for logical reasoning, the Logic-Bridge, so that students could easily understand logical concepts such as inference, probative weight and force, argument strength, inference-upon-inference, structural well-formedness vs. validity, logical relevancy, degrees of certainty or acceptability, objections, and serial and convergent lines of reasoning, all with a body-felt sense for easy comprehension and application. The Logic-Bridge visual syntax design metaphorically aligned with the student’s familiarity with typical objects and movement schemas.
He then starting conducting periodic DCIT seminars with an active learning/deliberate practice approach each year for State of Oregon trial expert witnesses and State of Oregon agency and county personnel. There was always a waiting list. And by invitation, he assisted, through custom DCIT training videos, Professor Peter Tillers in his year-long course in Advanced Logical Reasoning at Cardozo Law School.
Joseph also designed and presented a four-hour CLE program on DCIT logical reasoning, certified by the Oregon State Bar, to quickly increase the logical reasoning competency of Oregon attorneys in their factual and legal argumentation. (Please note that fundamentally inference in court is no different than inferences in other domains. In fact, there are a few selected court decisions that are typically used by argumentation theorists as test models in substantiating the efficacy of their scholarly work as Joseph has done in scholarly papers. For example, Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (N.Y. 1805) and Popov v. Hayashi, 2002 WL 31833731 (Ca. Sup. Ct. 2002) have been commonly used as standard examples.)
Joseph also designed a fun two-person or two-team Logic-Bridge board game based on the DCIT logical reasoning approach to facilitate active learning participation.
He was also invited by Professor Peter Tillers to present his DCIT approach at the “13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Law” (ICAIL) (AI & Evidential Inference Workshop) (Pittsburgh, PA). The academic conference was under the auspices of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL), an organization devoted to promoting research and development in the field of AI and Law with members throughout the world.
Based on his DCIT research, Joseph was also invited by Professor Frank Zenker to the 11th eColloq Program on Argumentation. The purpose was to have his DCIT approach critiqued by a leading argumentation scholar, Professor David Hitchcock, who had a very favorable review.
Finally, he started his own analytical reasoning training and consulting business, Logic Guaranteed, along with his legal practice to rapidly increase the reasoning competency of students, business leaders, and attorneys.
With this DCIT approach, Joseph achieved increased success in his own trial and appellate practices over the years. The justices and judges actually expressed amazement with the power and clarity of his factual and legal argumentation and his effective deconstruction of opposing arguments. Students quickly achieved an unprecedented level of mastery compared to law school students taught with a conventional curriculum. Expert witnesses substantially increased the quality of their logical reasoning in their testimony and written reports. And student reviews were extremely appreciative.
Frankly, in head-to-head comparisons with conventional approaches, the superiority of the DCIT approach is self-evident. The DCIT approach provides the most rigorous and robust analysis that is more easily understood by the audience and is much easier to learn and apply.
LogicǁGuaranteed 