Three senses of “argument”

AI Magazine

The field of computational models of argument is emerging as an important aspect of artificial intelligence research. The reason for this is based on the recognition that if we are to develop robust intelligent systems, then it is imperative that they can handle incomplete and inconsistent information in a way that somehow emulates the way humans tackle such a complex task. And one of the key ways that humans do this is to use argumentation either internally, by evaluating arguments and counterarguments‚ or externally, by for instance entering into a discussion or debate where arguments are exchanged. As we report in this review, recent developments in the field are leading to technology for artificial argumentation, in the legal, medical, and e-government domains, and interesting tools for argument mining, for debating technologies, and for argumentation solvers are emerging.

AI Magazine, 2017

The field of computational models of argument is emerging as an important aspect of artificial intelligence research. The reason for this is based on the recognition that if we are to develop robust intelligent systems, then it is imperative that they can handle incomplete and inconsistent information in a way that somehow emulates the way humans tackle such a complex task. And one of the key ways that humans do this is to use argumentation either internally, by evaluating arguments and counterarguments, or externally, by for instance entering into a discussion or debate where arguments are exchanged. As we report in this review, recent developments in the field are leading to technology for artificial argumentation, in the legal, medical, and e‐government domains, and interesting tools for argument mining, for debating technologies, and for argumentation solvers are emerging.

Computational Linguistics

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2012

Argumentation frameworks which are abstract are suitable for the study of independent properties of any specific aspect (e.g. arguments sceptical and credulous admissible) that are relevant for any argumentation context. However, its direct adoption on specific application contexts requires dealing with questions such as the argument structure, the argument categories, the conditions under which an attack/support is established between arguments, etc. This paper presents a generic argumentation framework which comprehends a conceptualization layer to capture the expressivity and semantics of the argumentation data employed in a specific context and simplifies its adoption by applications.

2007

Abstract This article reviews recent advances in the interdisciplinary area lying between artificial intelligence and the theory of argumentation. The article has two distinct foci: first, examining the ways in which argumentation has inspired new models of logical and computational intelligence, and second, exploring how AI techniques have been used and extended to model and handle real world argument in a wide variety of domains including law, education, medicine, and e-commerce.© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Argumentation is becoming entrenched in a number of areas of AI as a powerful means of approaching and framing problems, and of developing novel solutions. A prime example is in multi-agent systems (MAS), where argumentation has been proposed as a means of structuring inter-agent communication, linking the definition of language protocols to the design of structures in belief databases.

Argument & Computation, 2021

Argumentation schemes [35,80,91] are a relatively recent notion that continues an extremely ancient debate on one of the foundations of human reasoning, human comprehension, and obviously human argumentation, i.e., the topics. To understand the revolutionary nature of Walton's work on this subject matter, it is necessary to place it in the debate that it continues and contributes to, namely a view of logic that is much broader than the formalistic perspective that has been adopted from the 20th century until nowadays. With his book Argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning, Walton attempted to start a dialogue between three different fields or views on human reasoning-one (argumentation theory) very recent, one (dialectics) very ancient and with a very long tradition, and one (formal logic) relatively recent, but dominating in philosophy. Argumentation schemes were proposed as dialectical instruments, in the sense that they represented arguments not only as formal relations, but also as pragmatic inferences, as they at the same time depend on what the interlocutors share and accept in a given dialogical circumstance, and affect their dialogical relation. In this introduction, the notion of argumentation scheme will be analyzed in detail, showing its different dimensions and its defining features which make them an extremely useful instrument in Artificial Intelligence. This theoretical background will be followed by a literature review on the uses of the schemes in computing, aimed at identifying the most important areas and trends, the most promising proposals, and the directions of future research.

2005

Argument is central to law: legal disputes arise out of a disagreement between two parties and, since the disappearance of trials by ordeal and combat, such disputes are resolved by the parties to the dispute presenting arguments for their position to an agreed arbiter, who will typically justify the choice of the arguments he accepts with an argument of his own, intended to convince superior courts and the public at large.

Computación y sistemas, 2008

The main purpose of argumentation theory is to study the fundamental mechanisms that humans use in argumentation, and to explore ways to implement these mechanisms on computers. During the last years, argumentation has been gaining increasing importance in Computer Science, especially in areas as Artificial Intelligence, e-commerce, Multi-agent Systems and Decision-Making. In this paper, we present a brief overview of abstract argumentation semantics. In order to promote and disseminate this young area, we ...

2000

In this paper, a survey is presented of the main approaches to the structure of argumentation. The paper starts with a historical overview of the distinctions between various types of argument structure. Next, the main definitions given in the various approaches are discussed as well as the methods that are proposed to deal with doubtful cases.