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I have a question/curiosity about the gray "don't support" boxes.

Well, my first question is how do you make these? There's a "quick start" map template that has them, but I don't know how to make them for scratch.

Second question: when would you need such a thing? Is it for mapping an argument that contains a red herring? That's all I could think of.

Thanks!

Hi dffisher,

Go to the Evaluation tab in the ribbon within Rationale, make the item you want to evaluate active by clicking once with the left mouse button on the box (it wil show a blue edge) and make your choice by clicking on one of the options on the Evaluation tab.

Making an evaluation in Advanced Reasoning mode you can distinguish between the truth or acceptability of a claim on one hand and, on the other hand, the strength or validity of the inference from a set of claims (a reason or objection) to another claim.

So in Advanced Reasoning mode, evaluation has two steps: – the first is to consider whether each part of the reason is true (these are also known as claims or premises) - having determined whether each claim is true, then you determine whether the reason or objection provides support, or opposes the claim above.

You can use this option e.g. when you are evaluating an argument of someone else or when you want to check your own argument.

Aha! Thank you, Timo. So it's not for mapping an argument as given, but for evaluating an argument. I appreciate it.

More information on evaluating an argument map you can find:

• in the Rationale Guide here

• in the Tutorial Critical Thinking here, here and here.