Combining Explanation and Argumentation in Dialogue

Explanation and argumentation can be used together in such a way that evidence, in the form of arguments, is used to support explanations. In a hybrid system, the interlocking of argument and explanation compounds the problem of how to differentiate between them. The distinction is imperative if we want to avoid the mistake of treating something as fallacious while it is not. Furthermore, the two forms of reasoning may influence dialogue protocol and strategy. In this paper a basis for solving the problem is proposed using a dialogue model where the context of the dialogue is used to distinguish argument from explanation

ArguBlogging:an application for the Argument Web

In this paper, we present a software tool for ‘ArguBlogging’, which allows users to construct debate and discussions across blogs, linking existing and new online resources to form distributed, structured conversations. Arguments and counterarguments can be posed by giving opinions on one’s own blog and replying to other bloggers’ posts. The resulting argument structure is connected to the Argument Web, in which argumentative structures are made semantically explicit and machine-processable. We discuss the ArguBlogging tool and the underlying infrastructure and ontology of the Argument Web

Can predictive justice improve the predictability and consistency of judicial decision-making?

There has recently been talk of algorithms that predict decisions in legal cases being used by the judiciary to improve the predictability and consistency of judicial decision making. We argue that their use may minimise the error rate of decisions in the long run, but that this would require not only major technical advances but also major changes in legal thinking about what is the most important objective of judicial decision-making: optimising individual justice in a particular case or reducing errors in the long run. We further argue that if algorithmic decision predictors give any useful information in individual cases to judges at all, this is not in its predictions but in its explanation

On the relevance of algorithmic decision predictors for judicial decision making

In this article, we discuss case decision predictors, algorithms which, given some features of a legal case predict the outcome of the case (i.e. the decision of the judge). We discuss whether, and if so how, such prediction algorithms can be used to support judges in their decision making process. We conclude that case decision predictors can only be useful in individual cases if they can give legal justifications for their predictions, and that only these legal justifications are what should matter for a judge

Contrastive Explanations for Argumentation-Based Conclusions

In this paper we discuss contrastive explanations for formal argumentation - the question why a certain argument (the fact) can be accepted, whilst another argument (the foil) cannot be accepted under various extension-based semantics. The recent work on explanations for argumentation-based conclusions has mostly focused on providing minimal explanations for the (non-)acceptance of arguments. What is still lacking, however, is a proper argumentation-based interpretation of contrastive explanations. We show under which conditions contrastive explanations in abstract and structured argumentation are meaningful, and how argumentation allows us to make implicit foils explicit