Events, time and argumentative systems

The accomplishment of systems with abilities to reason about actions and change and systems that can manage incomplete or not very reliable information with abilities to discuss or argument has been of great importance for artificial intelligence community. These two ways of reasoning were attacked independently, but they are complementary, since a lot of applications need of both, since all dynamic systems (dynamic on information) counts with uncomplete information and information that depends on events and time. The line of investigation suggested on this present work tries to achieve a system that can reason about action and at the same time can elaborate a discussion, i. e. intends to conciliate argumentative systems with reasoning about actions and change or temporal reasoning.Eje: Agentes y Sistemas InteligentesRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Political activity of brazilian adjudication: some dimensions

Since de advent of what is known as new constitucionalism, jurists have faced a difficult task in order to overcome some failures of normative positivism. In this context, the judiciary has played a renewed role, which can be justified on grounds of legal theory and on institutional reasons. However, this new role has led legal philosophers to several concerns, such as the relationship between law and ethics. On one hand, Critical Legal Studies points out that the judge always acts informed by his own convictions. On the other hand, according to R. Forst (within another context, but also relevant here), this is not really a problem, because a rule can be provided with ethics, but not ethically justified. This openness of law to moral makes it difficult for the interpretative judicial discourse to be taken as claimed by K. Günther: as a discourse of application only, and not of justification. All these controversies, however, lead to a common statement: the constitutional adjudication has been exercising a different activity. Some legal systems allows such activity legitimacy in some extent, like Brazilian’s, for example, which i) states a very broad adjudication, ii) provides an extensive catalog of basic rights, and iii) contains several procedural mechanisms for their protection. This empowers the adjudication to exercise what can be called a political activity. Therefore, a series of moral issues which were once exclusive to the political arena have been brought to the judiciary, such as: gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, religious freedom, federation, separation of powers, distribution of scarce resources. In a democracy, these moral questions ought to be mainly decided through deliberation outside the judiciary, but not always this is what happens. The paper discusses these issues, showing also how the Brazilian Supreme Court has dealt - technically, or not - with this relationship between law and justice in a complex and pluralist society

Information Seeking Processes in Evaluating Argumentation

This article points out the relevance of the research on information seeking for argumentation theory. The process of evaluating argumentation presupposes diverse principles of argument classification and forms thus conflicting information needs. Following Taylor (1989), we distinguish between Aristotelian classification and the prototype classification. We show how these classification kinds form the conflicting principles of information seeking providing at the same time a common ground for the dissent information seeking processes in evaluating argumentation

Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Language and argumentation in the controversy economic

This article offers an approach to the general structure of the controversy in economy. In our case we adopted a perspective to study a particular aspect of the rhetoric that comes from the context of a particular controversy: the controversy on the advantages of the free commerce between Daly and Bhagwati. It is sustained that the positions in economy present with relative frequency interest conflicts that are revealed in the dialectic one of the arguments. A proponent in open defense of the free commerce is not released of presumptions reflected in the field of the rhetoric. Reason why to include the language dimensions of the argumentation in economy has advantages for the field of the explanation and the epistemology in the social sciences.

論述における非明示的推論の解析：オーバーナイトアプローチ

Tohoku University博士（情報科学）thesi

Designing as Construction of Representations: A Dynamic Viewpoint in Cognitive Design Research

This article presents a cognitively oriented viewpoint on design. It focuses on cognitive, dynamic aspects of real design, i.e., the actual cognitive activity implemented by designers during their work on professional design projects. Rather than conceiving de-signing as problem solving - Simon's symbolic information processing (SIP) approach - or as a reflective practice or some other form of situated activity - the situativity (SIT) approach - we consider that, from a cognitive viewpoint, designing is most appropriately characterised as a construction of representations. After a critical discussion of the SIP and SIT approaches to design, we present our view-point. This presentation concerns the evolving nature of representations regarding levels of abstraction and degrees of precision, the function of external representations, and specific qualities of representation in collective design. Designing is described at three levels: the organisation of the activity, its strategies, and its design-representation construction activities (different ways to generate, trans-form, and evaluate representations). Even if we adopt a "generic design" stance, we claim that design can take different forms depending on the nature of the artefact, and we propose some candidates for dimensions that allow a distinction to be made between these forms of design. We discuss the potential specificity of HCI design, and the lack of cognitive design research occupied with the quality of design. We close our discussion of representational structures and activities by an outline of some directions regarding their functional linkages

Naturalizing Moral Justification: Rethinking the Method of Moral Epistemology

The companion piece to this article, “Situating Moral Justification,” challenges the idea that moral epistemology\u27s mission is to establish a single, all‐purpose reasoning strategy for moral justification because no reasoning practice can be expected to deliver authoritative moral conclusions in all social contexts. The present article argues that rethinking the mission of moral epistemology requires rethinking its method as well. Philosophers cannot learn which reasoning practices are suitable to use in particular contexts exclusively by exploring logical relations among concepts. Instead, in order to understand which reasoning practices are capable of justifying moral claims in different types of contexts, we need to study empirically the relationships between reasoning practices and the contexts in which they are used. The article proposes that philosophers investigate case studies of real‐world moral disputes in which people lack shared cultural assumptions and/or are unequal in social power. It motivates and explains the proposed case study method and illustrates the philosophical value of this method through a case study