Did He Jump or Was He Pushed? Abductive Practical Reasoning

In this paper we present an approach to abductive reasoning in law by examining it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of Action-based Alternating Transition Systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example.</p

Did He Jump or Was He Pushed? Abductive Practical Reasoning

In this paper we present an approach to abductive reasoning in law by examining it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of Action-based Alternating Transition Systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example

The Result of a Polygraph Examination as an Argument in Criminal Investigation

"The result of polygraph examination is a testimony put forth by an expert after concluding examination on a subject who agreed to undergo the procedure. Th e subject of consideration here is only the results acquired in examinations conducted as part of criminal investigations, which implies the omission of pre-employment examinations, post-conviction sexual off ender testing (PCSOT), and other uses. Moreover, the analysis focuses on only those examinations that ended in indication that the subject of examination was deceptive as a result of the expert using one of the comparison question techniques, or as a person recognising an event in the case of applying the Concealed Information Test (CIT) technique. Nor does the study account for the results of inconclusive examinations."(...

The strategic formulation of abductive arguments in everyday reasoning

Since everyday abductive arguments convey the arguer’s individual interpretation of reality, they often exhibit a weak relationship between the premise and the conclusion. After all, what seems obvious to the arguer may appear far-fetched to an opponent. This paper examines some presentational devices that contribute to an arguer’s rhetorical goal of presenting the argument in such a way that the conclusion is suggested to be the result of a thorough investigative procedure

A literature review. Introduction to the special issue

UIDB/00183/2020 UIDP/00183/2020 PTDC/FER-FIL/28278/2017 CHIST-ERA/0002/2019Argumentation 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.publishersversionpublishe