#7 Custom Argument Verdicts

[Danny Weltman]

I think I want to be able to add custom argument verdicts. I think I want this, for instance, because I want to be able to make an argument which says that Bradley thinks the "later desire" position is nearly as plausible as the "time of both" position but that both positions face problems. Similarly, I want to be able to say that Sarch thinks that in so far as one is committed to the "Actual Desire Satisfactionism" position, the "Weak Concurrentism" position represents the best way to tackle the problems raised by the temporal nature of desires. Or, I want to be able to say that Dorsey thinks that that the "desire-satisfaction" position can accommodate the phenomenon of temporal welfare only by accepting the “time-of-desire” position.

As far as I can tell none of that really works right now with the basic setup of the "arguments" thing. Maybe there's some way to do all this already, but if not, I think being able to add custom argument verdicts would solve it?

[Jason Winning]

While it may not be fully what you're asking for, in the next version of Hypernomicon (probably will be numbered 1.32.2) the XML for verdict records will be implemented a little differently so that they will be more customizable.

In particular, you will be able to specify in Other.xml whether a given verdict is "in favor" or not. And you can add new verdicts, remove them, rename, etc.

So verdicts, considered singly, will be fully customizable (or, more so than before). But verdicts will still be monadic or unary. What you are asking for here is for verdicts to be polyadic or n-ary instead, so that a single verdict would specify a relation between multiple positions/arguments.