Public health reasoning: a logical view of trust

The public has a pact with the experts who deliver public health. That pact can be characterized as a relationship of trust in which the public trusts health experts to act in its best interests in return for its adherence to recommendations and other advice. This relationship clearly has emotional elements, as evidenced by strong feelings of anger and betrayal when public health recommendations are shown to be wrong. But it also has rational or logical components which are less often acknowledged by commentators. In this paper, these components are examined with special emphasis on the role of authority arguments in mediating the trust relationship between health experts and the public. It is contended that these arguments function as cognitive heuristics in that they facilitate decision-making in the absence of expert knowledge. A questionnaire study of public health reasoning was conducted in 879 members of the public. Participants were asked to consider a number of public health scenarios in which various arguments from authority were employed. Epistemic conditions, known to be associated with the rational warrant of these arguments, were systematically varied across these scenarios. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that subjects are adept at recognizing the conditions under which arguments from authority are more or less rationally warranted. The trust relationship at the heart of public health has logical components which lay people are capable of rationally evaluating during public health deliberations. This rational capacity should be exploited by experts during public health communication

Scaring the public: fear appeal arguments in public health reasoning

The study of threat and fear appeal arguments has given rise to a sizeable literature. Even within a public health context, much is now known about how these arguments work to gain the public's compliance with health recommendations. Notwithstanding this level of interest in, and examination of, these arguments, there is one aspect of these arguments that still remains unexplored. That aspect concerns the heuristic function of these arguments within our thinking about public health problems. Specifically, it is argued that threat and fear appeal arguments serve as valuable shortcuts in our reasoning, particularly when that reasoning is subject to biases that are likely to diminish the effectiveness of public health messages. To this extent, they are rationally warranted argument forms rather than fallacies, as has been their dominant characterization in logic

Examination dialogue: An argumentation framework for critically questioning an expert opinion

Recent work in argumentation theory (Walton and Krabbe, 1995; Walton, 2005) and artificial intelligence (Bench-Capon, 1992, 2003; Cawsey, 1992; McBurney and Parsons, 2002; Bench-Capon and Prakken, 2005) uses types of dialogue as contexts of argument use. This paper provides an analysis of a special type called examination dialogue, in which one party questions another party, sometimes critically or even antagonistically, to try to find out what that party knows about something. This type of dialogue is most prominent in law and in both legal and non-legal arguments based on expert opinion. It is also central to dialogue systems for questioning and answering in expert systems in artificial intelligence. Examples studied are: (1) exegetical analyses and criticisms of religious and philosophical texts, and (2) legal examinations and cross-examinations conducted in a trial setting

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Research opportunities for argumentation in social networks

Nowadays, many websites allow social networking between their users in an explicit or implicit way. In this work, we show how argumentation schemes theory can provide a valuable help to formalize and structure on-line discussions and user opinions in decision support and business oriented websites that held social networks between their users. Two real case studies are studied and analysed. Then, guidelines to enhance social decision support and recommendations with argumentation are provided.This work summarises results of the authors joint research, funded by an STMS of the Agreement Technologies COST Action 0801, by the Spanish government grants [CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00022, and TIN2012-36586-C03-01] and by the GVA project [PROMETEO 2008/051].Heras Barberá, SM.; Atkinson, KM.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Grasso, F.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Mcburney, PJ. (2013). Research opportunities for argumentation in social networks. Artificial Intelligence Review. 39(1):39-62. doi:10.1007/s10462-012-9389-0S3962391Amgoud L (2009) Argumentation for decision making. Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, BerlinAnderson P (2007) What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. JISC Iechnology and Standards Watch reportBentahar J, Meyer CJJ, Moulin B (2007) Securing agent-oriented systems: an argumentation and reputation-based approach. In: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on information technology: new generations (ITNG 2007), IEEE Computer Society, pp 507–515Buckingham Shum S (2008) Cohere: towards Web 2.0 argumentation. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on computational models of argument, COMMA, pp 28–30Burke R (2002) Hybrid recommender systems: survey and experiments. User Model User-Adapt Interact 12:331–370Cartwright D, Atkinson K (2008) Political engagement through tools for argumentation. In: Proceedings of the second international conference on computational models of argument (COMMA 2008), pp 116–127Chesñevar C, McGinnis J, Modgil S, Rahwan I, Reed C, Simari G, South M, Vreeswijk G, Willmott S (2006) Towards an argument interchange format. Knowl Eng Rev 21(4):293–316Chesñevar CI, Maguitman AG, Gonzàlez MP (2009) Empowering recommendation technologies through argumentation. Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, Berlin, pp 403–422García AJ, Dix J, Simari GR (2009) Argument-based logic programming. Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, BerlinGolbeck J (2006) Generating predictive movie recommendations from trust in social networks. In: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on trust management, LNCS, vol 3986, 93–104Gordon T, Prakken H, Walton D (2007) The Carneades model of argument and burden of proof. Artif Intell 171(10–15):875–896Guha R, Kumar R, Raghavan P, Tomkins A (2004) Propagating trust and distrust. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on, World Wide Web, pp 403–412Heras S, Navarro M, Botti V, Julián V (2009) Applying dialogue games to manage recommendation in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent aystems, ArgMASHeras S, Atkinson K, Botti V, Grasso F, Julián V, McBurney P (2010a) How argumentation can enhance dialogues in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on computational models of argument, COMMA, vol 216, pp 267–274Heras S, Atkinson K, Botti V, Grasso F, Julián V, McBurney P (2010b) Applying argumentation to enhance dialogues in social networks. In: ECAI 2010 workshop on computational models of natural argument, CMNA, pp 10–17Karacapilidis N, Tzagarakis M (2007) Web-based collaboration and decision making support: a multi-disciplinary approach. Web-Based Learn Teach Technol 2(4):12–23Kim D, Benbasat I (2003) Trust-related arguments in internet stores: a framework for evaluation. J Electron Commer Res 4(2):49–64Kim D, Benbasat I (2006) The effects of trust-assuring arguments on consumer trust in internet stores: application of Toulmin’s model of argumentation. Inf Syst Rese 17(3):286–300Laera L, Tamma V, Euzenat J, Bench-Capon T, Payne T (2006) Reaching agreement over ontology alignments. In: Proceedings of the 5th international semantic web conference (ISWC 2006)Lange C, Bojãrs U, Groza T, Breslin J, Handschuh S (2008) Expressing argumentative discussions in social media sites. In: Social data on the web (SDoW2008) workshop at the 7th international semantic web conferenceLinden G, Smith B, York J (2003) Amazon.com recommendations: item-to-item collaborative filtering. IEEE Internet Comput 7(1):76–80Linden G, Hong J, Stonebraker M, Guzdial M (2009) Recommendation algorithms, online privacy and more. Commun ACM, 52(5)Mika P (2007) Ontologies are us: a unified model of social networks and semantics. J Web Semant 5(1):5–15Montaner M, López B, de la Rosa JL (2002) Opinion-based filtering through trust. In: Cooperative information agents VI, LNCS, vol 2446, pp 127–144Ontañón S, Plaza E (2008) Argumentation-based information exchange in prediction markets. In: Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent systems, ArgMASPazzani MJ, Billsus D (2007) Content-based recommendation systems. In: The adaptive web, LNCS, vol 4321, pp 325–341Rahwan I, Zablith F, Reed C (2007) Laying the foundations for a world wide argument web. Artif Intell 171(10–15):897–921Rahwan I, Banihashemi B (2008) Arguments in OWL: a progress report. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on computational models of argument (COMMA), pp 297–310Reed C, Walton D (2007) Argumentation schemes in dialogue. In: Dissensus and the search for common ground, OSSA-07, volume CD-ROM, pp 1–11Sabater J, Sierra C (2002) Reputation and social network analysis in multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 1st international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, vol 1, pp 475–482Schafer JB, Konstan JA, Riedl J (2001) E-commerce recommendation applications. Data Min Knowl Discov 5:115–153Schafer JB, Frankowski D, Herlocker J, Sen S (2007) Collaborative filtering recommender systems. In: The adaptive web, LNCS, vol 4321, pp 291–324Schneider J, Groza T, Passant A (2012) A review of argumentation for the aocial semantic web. Semantic web-interoperability, usability, applicability. IOS Press, Washington, DCTempich C, Pinto HS, Sure Y, Staab S (2005) An argumentation ontology for distributed, loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering processes of oNTologies (DILIGENT). In: Proceedings of the 2nd European semantic web conference, ESWC, pp 241–256Toulmin SE (1958) The uses of argument. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKTrojahn C, Quaresma P, Vieira R, Isaac A (2009) Comparing argumentation frameworks for composite ontology matching. in: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent systems, ArgMASTruthMapping. http://truthmapping.com/Walter FE, Battiston S, Schweitzer F (2007) A model of a trust-based recommendation system on a social network. J Auton Agents Multi-Agent Syst 16(1):57–74Walton D, Krabbe E (1995) Commitment in dialogue: basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. State University of New York Press, New York, NYWalton D, Reed C, Macagno F (2008) Argumentation schemes. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeWells S, Gourlay C, Reed C (2009) Argument blogging. Computational models of natural argument, CMNAWyner A, Schneider J (2012) Arguing from a point of view. In: Proceedings of the first international conference on agreement technologie

Rationality: a social-epistemology perspective

Both in philosophy and in psychology, human rationality has traditionally been studied from an "individualistic" perspective. Recently, social epistemologists have drawn attention to the fact that epistemic interactions among agents also give rise to important questions concerning rationality. In previous work, we have used a formal model to assess the risk that a particular type of social-epistemic interactions lead agents with initially consistent belief states into inconsistent belief states. Here, we continue this work by investigating the dynamics to which these interactions may give rise in the population as a whole

A speech act analysis

UIDB/00183/2020 UIDP/00183/2020Conclusions of theoretical reasoning are assertions—or at least speech acts belonging to the class of assertives, such as hypotheses, predictions or estimates. What, however, are the conclusions of practical reasoning? Employing the concepts of speech act theory, in this paper I investigate which speech acts we perform when we’re done with an instance of a practical argument and present its result in a linguistic form. To this end, I first offer a detailed scheme of practical argument suitable for an external pragmatic account (rather than an internal cognitive account). Resorting to actual examples, I then identify a class of action-inducing speech acts as characteristic conclusions of practical argument. I argue that these speech acts—promises, orders, pieces of advice, proposals, and others—differ chiefly depending on the agent of the action induced (me, us, you, them) and their illocutionary strength.publishersversionpublishe