Meta-Argumentation Frameworks for Multi-party Dialogues

Abstract

The conclusions drawn from a dialogue depend both on the content of the arguments, and the level of trust placed in the arguments and the entity advancing them. In this paper, we describe a framework for dialogue where such trust forms the basis for expressing preferences between arguments, and in turn, for computing conclusions of the dialogue. Our framework contains object and meta-level arguments, and uses ASPIC+ to represent arguments, while argument schemes capture meta-level arguments about trust and preferences.

Burden of Persuasion in Meta-argumentation

“…In this section, we introduce the meta-argumentation framework. For the sake of simplicity, we choose to model our meta-argumentation framework by exploiting bimodal graphs, which are often exploited both to define meta-level concepts and to understand the interactions of object-level and meta-level arguments [7,6]. Accordingly, Subsection 2.1 presents the object-level argumentation language exploited by our model, leveraging on an ASPIC + -like argumentation framework [9].…”

“…The work finds its foundation in the approaches of meta-argumentation that emphasize the inner nature of arguments and dialogues as inherently meta-logical [6,7]. Our approach relies on the works from [6,7] introducing only the required abstraction at the meta level.…”

“…The work finds its foundation in the approaches of meta-argumentation that emphasize the inner nature of arguments and dialogues as inherently meta-logical [6,7]. Our approach relies on the works from [6,7] introducing only the required abstraction at the meta level. The proposed meta-argumentation framework for the burden of persuasion includes three ingredients: (i) object-level argumentation -to create arguments from defeasible and strict rules -, (ii) meta-level argumentation -to create arguments dealing with abstractions related to the burden concept using argument schemes (or meta-level rules) -, and (iii) bimodal graphs to define interaction between the object level and the meta level-following the account in [6].…”

Resilience, reliability, and coordination in autonomous multi-agent systems

“…It should also be noted that within a MAS, concepts such as trust, goals, obligations and permissions, as well as the provenance of information also affect decision-making. Research within A 3 has examined how an argumentation semantics can also be used to reason alongside such concepts [110,93,111,112,8]. As part of such decision making, strength of evidence (due to different levels of trust in sources or simple uncertainty) must be considered, and working with different types of argument strength is another element of the group's research [113,114,115,116].…”

Trichotomic Argumentation Representation

“…Distinguishing between different levels of commitment or tracking the commitment of actors is mostly studied in the context of dialogue games [44,24,25,46,11] but we believe it has relevant interconnections with a speaker's ethos. Strongly committing to propositions obligates an actor to defend them when challenged and should have a negative effect on her trustworthiness when this fails [30]. In contrast, an actor voicing arguments for the opposing view besides her own should receive increased trust due to seeming well-informed and not being afraid of attacks on her own stance.…”