In particular, he has been developing and evaluating an approach to improving these skills, known variously as The Reason Method, and LAMP ("Lots of Argument Mapping Practice").
To confront this, van Gelder and his colleague Andy Bulka developed the argument mapping software packages Reason!Able (2000) and Rationale (2006).
Van Gelder uses this software to help 'teach' the first year philosophy subject Critical Thinking: The Art of Reasoning which reliably achieves substantial gains in the critical thinking abilities of students (0.7 to 0.85 standard deviations) as measured by pre and post semester testing with the use of control groups of the same ages as the student cohort both studying at Melbourne University and not studying at university.
[4] Van Gelder has also applied argument mapping to business decision making, and has released the Reasoning PowerPoint App for this purpose.
Chris Eliasmith wrote a critique of Tim van Gelder's dynamicism and his proposal to replace the Turing machine by the Watt governor as a model of cognition.