Cohere: Towards Web 2.0 Argumentation

Students, researchers and professional analysts lack effective tools to make personal and collective sense of problems while working in distributed teams. Central to this work is the process of sharing–and contesting–interpretations via different forms of argument. How does the 'Web 2.0' paradigm challenge us to deliver useful, usable tools for online argumentation? This paper reviews the current state of the art in Web Argumentation, describes key features of the Web 2.0 orientation, and identifies some of the tensions that must be negotiated in bringing these worlds together. It then describes how these design principles are interpreted in Cohere, a web tool for social bookmarking, idea-linking, and argument visualization

Toulmin Diagrams in Theory & Practice: Theory Neutrality in Argument Representation

The Toulmin diagram layout is very familiar and widely used, particularly in the teaching of critical thinking skills. The conventional box-and-arrow diagram is equally familiar and widespread. Translation between the two throws up a number of interesting challenges. Some of these challenges (such as the relationship between Toulmin warrants and their counterparts in traditional diagrams) represent slightly different ways of looking at old and deep theoretical questions. Others (such as how to allow Toulmin diagrams to be recursive) are diagrammatic versions of questions that have already been addressed in artificial intelligence models of argument. But there are further questions (such as the relationships between refutations, rebuttals and undercutters, and the roles of multiple warrants) that are posed as a specific result of examining the diagram inter-translation problem. These three classes of problems are discussed. To the first class are addressed solutions based on engineering pragmatism; to the second class are addressed solutions drawn from the appropriate literature; and to the third class, fuller exploration is offered justifying the approaches taken in developing solutions that offer both pragmatic utility and theoretical interest. Finally, these solutions are explored briefly in the context of the Araucaria system, showing the ways in which analysts can tackle arguments either using one diagrammatic style or another, or even a combination of the two

Argumentation in Philosophical Controversies

Anyone interested in philosophical argumentation should be prepared to study philosophical debates and controversies because it is an intensely dialogical, and even contentious, genre of argumentation. There is hardly any other way to do them justice. This is the reason why the present special issue addresses philosophical argumentation within philosophical debates. Of the six articles in this special issue, one deals with a technical aspect, the diagramming of arguments, another contrasts two moments in philosophical argumentation, Antiquity and the twentieth century, focusing on the use of refutation, and the remaining four analyze particular philosophical controversies. The controversies analyzed difer signifcantly in their characteristics (time, extension, media, audience,…). Hopefully, this varied sample will illuminate some salient aspects of philosophical argumentation, its representation and variations throughout history. We are fully aware that, given the scarcity of previous studies of philosophical debates from the perspective of argumentation theory, the following specimens of analysis must have several shortcomings. But it is a wellknown adage that the hardest part is the beginning. That is what we tried to achieve here, no more, but no less eitherOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-FEDER funds of the European Union support, under project Parg_Praz (PGC2018-095941-B-I00

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

Teaching in Ill-Defined Domains Using ITS and AI Appraoches

Ill-defined domains offer many challenges to computer scientists. Developing intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) in these domains is a very challenging task due to the difficulty in modeling these domains, answers to ill-defined problems are ambiguously identified as right or wrong, and no generally accepted architecture is currently existed. This paper presents general guidelines for the development of ITSs in ill-defined domains, such as Argumentation and Ethics. This is instantiated in the two example systems AEINS and ALES. These systems offer adaptive learning processes and personalized feedback aiming to transfer the required skills to the learners and develop their reasoning

Developing a domain-specific plug-in for a modelling platform: the good, the bad, the ugly

Domain-Specific Modelling Languages (DSML) allow software engineers to use the techniques and tools of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) to express, represent and analyse a particular domain. By defining DSMLs as UML profiles, i.e. domain-specific extensions of the UML metamodel, development time for DSMLs can be greatly reduced by extending existing UML tools. In this paper, we reflect on our own experience in building rbacUML, a DSML for Role-Based Access Control modelling and analysis, as a plugin for a UML modelling platform. We describe what motivated our choice, and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of using an existing platform to develop a DSML on top of UML and additional analysis tooling

Software agents in support of human argument mapping

This paper reports progress in realizing human-agent argumentation, which we argue will be part of future Computer-Supported Collaborative Argumentation (CSCA) tools. With a particular interest in argument mapping, we present two investigations demonstrating how a particular agent-oriented language and architecture can augment CSCA: (i) the use of the IBIS formalism enabling Brahms agents to simulate argumentation, and (ii) the extension of the Compendium tool by integrating it with Brahms agents tasked with detecting related discourse elsewhere

A Computational Argumentation Framework for Agent Societies

Starting from the idea that the social context of agents determines the way in which agents can argue and reach agreements, this context should have a decisive influence in the computational representation of arguments. In this report, we advance research in the area of computational frameworks for agent argumentation by proposing a new argumentation framework (AF) for the design of open MAS in which the participating software agents are able to manage and exchange arguments between themselves taking into account the agents¿ social context. In order to do this, we have analysed the necessary requirements for this type of framework 1 and taken into account them in the design of our framework. Also, the knowledge resources that the agents can use to manage arguments in this framework are presented in this work. In addition, if heterogeneous agents can interact in the framework, they need a common language to represent arguments and argumentation processes. To cope with this, we have also designed an argumentation ontology to represent arguments and argumentation concepts in our framework.Heras Barberá, SM.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2011). A Computational Argumentation Framework for Agent Societies. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/1103