Representing and reasoning about arguments mined from texts and dialogues

International audienceThis paper presents a target language for representing arguments mined from natural language. The key features are the connection between possible reasons and possible claims and recursive embedding of such connections. Given a base of these arguments and counterarguments mined from texts or dialogues, we want be able combine them, deconstruct them, and to analyse them (for instance to check whether the set is inconsistent). To address these needs, we propose a formal language for representing reasons and claims, and a framework for inferencing with the arguments and counterarguments in this formal language

In memoriam Douglas N. Walton: the influence of Doug Walton on AI and law

Doug Walton, who died in January 2020, was a prolific author whose work in informal logic and argumentation had a profound influence on Artificial Intelligence, including Artificial Intelligence and Law. He was also very interested in interdisciplinary work, and a frequent and generous collaborator. In this paper seven leading researchers in AI and Law, all past programme chairs of the International Conference on AI and Law who have worked with him, describe his influence on their work

Computational Argumentation-based Chatbots: a Survey

The article archived on this institutional repository is a preprint. It has not been certified by peer review.Chatbots are conversational software applications designed to interact dialectically with users for a plethora of different purposes. Surprisingly, these colloquial agents have only recently been coupled with computational models of arguments (i.e. computational argumentation), whose aim is to formalise, in a machine-readable format, the ordinary exchange of information that characterises human communications. Chatbots may employ argumentation with different degrees and in a variety of manners. The present survey sifts through the literature to review papers concerning this kind of argumentation-based bot, drawing conclusions about the benefits and drawbacks that this approach entails in comparison with standard chatbots, while also envisaging possible future development and integration with the Transformer-based architecture and state-of-the-art Large Language models

On what Ontology Is and not-Is

In this paper I study the connection between logic and metaphysics in Plato's participation theory, from the structural properties of the latter. Although Plato was the first ever to formulate the contradiction principle explicitly (in the Phaedo), the logic underlying his system appears to be paraconsistent. This confirms an earlier suggestion by G. Priest. Its technical characteristics and the textual evidence supporting this interpretation are both studied in detail.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

Discourse-centric learning analytics: mapping the terrain

There is an increasing interest in developing learning analytic techniques for the analysis, and support of, high quality learning discourse. This paper maps the terrain of discourse-centric learning analytics (DCLA), outlining the distinctive contribution of DCLA and outlining a definition for the field moving forwards. It is our claim that DCLA provide the opportunity to explore the ways in which: discourse of various forms both resources and evidences learning; the ways in which small and large groups, and individuals make and share meaning together through their language use; and the particular types of language – from discipline specific, to argumentative and socio-emotional – associated with positive learning outcomes. DCLA is thus not merely a computational aid to help detect or evidence ‘good’ and ‘bad’ performance (the focus of many kinds of analytic), but a tool to help investigate questions of interest to researchers, practitioners, and ultimately learners. The paper ends with three core issues for DCLA researchers – the challenge of context in relation to DCLA; the various systems required for DCLA to be effective; and the means through which DCLA might be delivered for maximum impact at the micro (e.g. learner), meso (e.g. school), and macro (e.g. governmental) levels

Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection

We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

ΤΩΝ ΛΟΓΩΝ Ο ΠΡΩΤΟΣ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΜΙΚΡΟΤΑΤΟΣ, Sph. 262c6-7: The First and LIttlest of Sentences

In this paper I show that the orthodox syntax suggested in Sophistes 262C6-7 and the surrounding text is not adhered to in the dialogues. Within the limited universe of monadic atomic sentence syntax extended with constants for existence and unity, in fact, all but three of the 14 possible irregular forms are used in one or other of the three dialogues instanced here. Self-predication, which, in the mid-twentieth-century, fascinated so many scholars, turns out to be just one among the many varieties of irregular syntax in the dialogues. The nonadherence of other interlocutors to the Eleatic Stranger’s description of monadic atomic sentences enables these interlocutors to talk about Ideas in the dialogues in familiar ways; unless the syntactically irregular sentences were used, the interlocutors would not have been able to talk about Ideas the way they did. The dialogues contain a variety of sentences and sentence schemata that we commonly consider ill formed and that we should expect to produce peculiar results when used in argument. Of course, there are no grounds for attributing syntactical insensitivity to Plato the author who, himself, represents this insensitivity in an orderly and carefully structured way as characterizing the conversation of some of his fictionalized interlocutors. The appearance of these irregular sentences in the dialogues apparently engaged Aristotle, who devoted much attention to what can and what cannot be predicated of what. Thus in Aristotle one finds a theory of predication which systematically excludes the irregular sentences. The Categoriae addresses what can and cannot be said of what in the normal course of things, and the Tópica addresses, for example, unity and existence as predicates. I would suggest in closing that the apparatus I have offered here provides a largely unexplored way to reconstruct the controversies of the Academy and to track the way they led predication. into the development of what we have begun to understand as Aristotle’s theory of predication