We are delighted to be hosting Patrick Saint-Dizier this week to push forward our collaboration on argument mining in dialogical contexts. Amongst other commitments, Patrick is giving a masterclass on the TextCoop system on Wednesday from 10am to 3pm.
We are pleased to welcome Joonsuk Park, a graduate student from Cornell, who is visiting ARG-tech from mid June until the end of August. He will be working on various aspects of argument mining whilst he’s here.
We are delighted to be hosting a visit from David Price of debategraph. David will be with the group all day on 18 January, including giving a School seminar in Wolfson on his experiences with debategraph in different application contexts.
We are delighted to be hosting a visit from Martin Caminada who has recently joined the University of Aberdeen. He will be here on 12 December to deliver a seminar in Wolfson entitled,
Argumentation as Inference versus Argumentation as Dialogue —
reconciling two lines of research
Abstract:
In the formal argumentation community, one can distinguish two main lines of research: argumentation as inference and argumentation as dialogue. The first line of research, going back to the work of Pollock, Vreeswijk and Simari & Loui, is focused in argumentation as a way of performing non-monotonic entailment. That is, it is focused on the *outcome* of argumentation. The second line of research, going back to the work of Hamblin, Mackenzie and Walton & Krabbe, is focused on argumentation as dialectics, involving various actors. That is, it is focused on the *process* of argumentation.
In our recent work, we aim to reconcile these two lines of research.
That is, we aim to express argument-based entailment as the ability to
win a discussion. In particular, we are able to show that:
(1) grounded semantics can be interpreted in terms of a persuasion dialogue
(2) (credulous) preferred semantics can be interpreted in terms of Socratic dialogue
(3) ideal and stable semantics can both be interpreted as specific sub-forms of Socratic dialogue
Apart from abstract argumentation, we also examine the possibilities of redefining ASPIC-style entailment in terms of structured dialogue. In general, we think that argument-based inference is not so much about what is true, but about what can be defended in rational discussion.
We are delighted to host a visit from Ashwag Maghraby from the University of Edinburgh who will be visiting us Wednesday, 28 November, 2012 and will be delivering a seminar in Wolfson on,
Bridging the Specification Protocol Gap in Argumentation
Abstract. Today, argumentation is gaining greater visibility since it is being used as part of the high-level specification of multi-agent systems (MAS). However, as we build complete MAS that involve argumentation, there is a need to produce concrete implementations in which these abstract specifications are realised via protocols coordinating agent behaviour. This creates a gap between standard argument specification and deployment of protocols. This research attempts to close this gap by using a combination of automated synthesis and verification methods. More precisely, this research proposes a means to moving rapidly from argument specification to protocol implementation, using the Argument Interchange Format (AIF is a generic specification language for argument structure) as the specification language and the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC is an executable specification language used for coordinating agents in open systems) as an implementation language. The resulting system provides engineers with a means of moving rapidly from argument specification to implementation. In this presentation, I will start with a brief introduction about MAS as well argumentation. Then I will explain, by using an example, how the chosen automated synthesis and verification methods were used to close the gap between standard argument specification and deployment of protocols.
We are delighted to welcome Marcelo Acuña to the group for the next few months. Marcelo is a student at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, where he works with the Centre for Studies of Argumentation and Reasoning, CEAR, and where he has built up experience of using the Argunaut argument analysis tool.
Marcelo will be working with us to build bridges between ARG:dundee and CEAR and to explore cognitive aspects of argumentation in an Argument Web setting.
We are delighted to be hosting a visit from Prof. Tom Gordon from Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems (FOKUS) and Institute of Computer Science of the University of Potsdam. Tom is here to work with us on interactions between the EPSRC-funded DAM project and the EU FP7 IMPACT project, and to explore in detail connections between the AIF and LKIF (used in Tom’s Carneades system) in particular. Tom is also giving a seminar here, on Wednesday, 28 September at 12 noon in Wolfson, entitled,
The IMPACT Argumentation Toolbox for Policy Deliberations
Abstract. IMPACT is a European Framework 7 research and development project on the theme of information and communications technology for governance and policy modeling. IMPACT is conducting original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. These models will be used to develop and evaluate a prototype of an innovative argumentation toolbox for supporting open, inclusive and transparent deliberations about public policy on the World-Wide-Web. Four integrated web applications are being developed for the IMPACT toolbox: 1. Argument Reconstruction Tool; 2. Structured Consultation Tool; 3. Policy Modelling Tool; and 4. Argument Visualisation and Tracking Tool. All four tools are based on the same underlying computational model of argument and exchange arguments using the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF), an XML format for argumentation schemes and arguments inspired in part by the Argument Interchange Format (AIF) developed partly at the University of Dundee’s School of Computing.
Jacky Visser
For the next two weeks or so, we are delighted to be hosting Jacky Visser, a visitor from the University of Amsterdam. Jacky is studying for a Masters by research, and whilst he is in Dundee, will be working on building connections between pragma-dialectics and computational argumentation, and looking at the AIF in particular.
A project to support analysis of argumentation in Polish has recently been completed.
In May 2010, the Polish version of Araucaria, called Araucaria-PL, was released. Araucaria-PL is the first and only tool for argument analysis and diagramming that has a Polish language interface and Polish schemesets. The entire package can be downloaded as the zip file Araucaria-PL.zip.
Araucaria-PL has been used to create first online corpus of analyzed Polish argumentation, ArgDB-pl. ArgDB-pl is developed as a Polish version of ArgDB. Both corpora are built on the open AIF standard for argument representation.
Araucaria-PL and ArgDB-pl are the result of a project coordinated by Katarzyna Budzyńska (from Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw) and completed during her visit to ARG:dundee in 2009-10 supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education Program “Support for International Mobility of Scientists”. The project team also included Andrzej Nowacki and Joanna Skulska.
As a part of their Early Dispute Resolution initiative, the University of Dundee today hosted a meeting of Scottish mediators who visited ARG:Dundee to discuss the role of argumentation technology in mediation. To seed that discussion, we demonstrated many of the tools and projects that form a part of the group’s work, including the physical manipulation of argument resources via a Microsoft surface, as shown here.
