ARG:dundee at COMMA

Posted by chris on September 6, 2010

The main conference for argumentation in AI, COMMA, is running this week. The Third International Conference on Computational Models of Argument, COMMA 2010, is running in Desenzano del Garda.

ARG:dundee has strong representation at the event with a total of five papers in the proceedings:

  • Floris Bex, Henry Prakken, Chris Reed: A formal analysis of the AIF in terms of the ASPIC framework
  • Katarzyna Budzynska: Argument Analysis: Components of Interpersonal Argumentation
  • Nir Oren, Chris Reed, Michael Luck: Moving Between Argumentation Frameworks
  • Chris Reed, Simon Wells, Katarzyna Budzynska, Joseph Devereux: Building arguments with argumentation: the role of illocutionary force in computational models of argument
  • Mark Snaith, Joseph Devereux, John Lawrence, Chris Reed: Pipelining Argumentation Technologies
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Festschrift honouring Douglas Walton announced

Posted by chris on June 30, 2010

Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation

Chris Reed and Chris Tindale are delighted to announce today, at the 7th Conference on Argumentation of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA 2010), the release of a new festschrift that honours one of the leaders of the field: Professor Douglas Walton.

Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation examines Walton’s theories and the influence that they have had both in philosophy and in computational sciences and legal theory. The volume draws together seventeen papers from researchers in argumentation, speech communication, computer science, AI and jurisprudence to reflect on the profound impact that Walton’s work has had. The table of contents is available online.

It is published by College Publications, and is available on Amazon.

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CMNA X

Posted by chris on April 15, 2010

The Call for Papers for the 10th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument was made available this week. CMNA X will be colocated with ECAI in Lisbon in August 2010. The deadline for long papers is 9 May 2010, and for short papers is 6 June 2010. Paper submissions will be handled through the easychair site for the workshop. More details at www.cmna.info/CMNA10.

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OVA alpha-2 released

Posted by chris on March 1, 2010

OVA alpha 2 is the latest release of OVA, ARG:dundee’s drag-and-drop interface for analysing textual arguments.

What’s New in OVA alpha 2:

  • Analyse your own text as well as any web page
  • Edit the text for INodes
  • Colour coding for different node types
  • Edge styles for different scheme types
  • Easier selection of default schemes
  • New user interface design
  • Add participants to analyse dialogue (this feature is currently experimental)

Issues fixed in this release:

  • Problems with deleting nodes
  • Dragging nodes off screen and back again
  • Edge positioning after moving nodes

OVA can be found at http://ova.computing.dundee.ac.uk

As ever, we welcome your feedback.

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Liz Black visiting

Posted by chris on February 10, 2010

Liz Black who is currently at the University of Oxford working in the COSSAC group, is visiting us today. She is delivering a seminar:

Agreeing how to act

When deliberating about what to do, an autonomous agent must generate and consider the relative pros and cons of the different available options. The situation becomes even more complicated when multiple agents are involved in a joint deliberation, as each agent will have its own preferred outcome and this may change as new information is received from the other participating agents. This talk considers such joint deliberation through the use of argumentation techniques.

I will present a dialogue system that allows agents to come to an agreement about how to act in order to achieve a joint goal. During such a dialogue, an agent can use its perception of others in order to select arguments that it believes are likely to be particularly persuasive. I will discuss how an agent may develop a model of what is important to another agent and how it can then use this model to guide its dialogue behaviour.

The seminar will be in Wolfson as usual at noon.

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OVA-gen now available

Posted by Mark on January 25, 2010

OVA-gen, the latest member of the Online Visualisation of Argument (OVA) software suite, is now available for use. This Flash widget allows Abstract Argument Frameworks to be constructed, then saved as either DOT sources (which can be easily embedded in a LaTeX source), or sent to Dung-O-Matic or Dungine for computation of acceptability semantics.

OVA-gen can be accessed from http://ova.computing.dundee.ac.uk/ova-gen. As ever, we are keen to hear your feedback: please contact Chris or Mark.

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Congratulations to Dr. Bex

Posted by chris on October 29, 2009

Floris today successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled Evidence for a Good Story: A Hybrid Theory of Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence in Groningen, the Netherlands. His thesis work was supervised by Henry Prakken, Bart Verheij and Peter van Koppen.

  • Abstract: The thesis develops a theory of reasoning with the evidence and facts in the context of criminal cases. In the literature two approaches to such reasoning have been proposed: argumentation and storytelling. It is discussed how stories and arguments can be combined in one hybrid theory, which is presented both in a formal logic as well as informally. Furthermore, criteria that a good story or argument should meet are given and a formal-logical dialogue game, which aims to concretise these criteria, is presented.
  • Summary
  • Citation: F.J. Bex, Evidence for a Good Story: A Hybrid Theory of Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence. (2009) Doctoral Dissertation, University of Groningen.
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