Last night the ARG:dundee team conducted close argument analysis on a live 45 minute broadcast of an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Moral Maze, using our Argument AnalysisWall.
We aimed to make debates available on the Argument Web for allthedifferentcompatibleonline tools to access. Specifically, we wanted to analyse broadcast debate and support online interaction with those arguments. Live. To do it, we needed lots of analysts working together, using a large touch screen running bespoke software to collaboratively analyse the discourse. Stenographic transcription, argument segmentation and enthymeme reconstruction are all carried out by other team members. There are more details and a short video of the result is available and an unedited single-camera view of the full 45 minutes is also available. A more interesting, multi-camera version of the full analysis is also available.
TOAST calculates acceptability semantics of structured argumentation frameworks.
As part of the work on the Dialectical Argumentation Machines project, we have implemented a version of Prakken’s ASPIC+ framework. The application allows computation of various acceptability semantics over structured argumentation systems, making use of the Dung-O-Matic engine designed for abstract frameworks.
An API for programmatic access to the web service is also available.
The reference to go with it is:
Snaith, M. & Reed, C. (2012) “TOAST: online ASPIC+ implementation” in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA 2012), IOS Press, Vienna.
It’s reasonably scalable: it’s being used with rulesets of around 20,000 in work by Phil Quinlan. It’s also providing an evaluation back-end to the AIFdb. But as ever, please let us have your feedback.
Today sees the release of the first application built on the Argument Web that is aimed at non-specialist audiences: Argublogging. For bloggers and online commentators, argublogging offers a way of expressing agreement and disagreement in online conversations using the rich language of the argument web, but in a style that is at least as easy to use as existing online comment systems.
Argublogging contributes to the growing set of resources available in the language of the Argument Web, AIF, and argublogged argument can be visualised using OVA, analysed using Rationale, Araucaria and Carneades, and will soon be extendable using further Argument Web compatible tools.
For more information, visit argublogging.com or see the argublogging demo video:
A full beta of several key parts of the infrastructure for the Argument Web are released today.
AIF-compliant Argument Web servers at Dundee provide the backend support, though you can also download the database schema if you want to host your own.
Access to the databases is via a search interface which provides access to both entire argument maps and a dynamically navigable claim-to-claim view.
Finally, the AIFdb at Dundee also provides import and export functionality to form Argument Web interfaces to Rationale, Carneades and Araucaria, as well as providing export to DOT and SVG. Existing files in these formats can be uploaded online, and argument maps can be downloaded from the AIFdb interface. The ontology which drives the Argument Web is expressed in OWL, and all resources are also submittable and available from the databases in RDF.
In the coming weeks, additional tools for updating, manipulating, searching and navigating argument web resources will also be made available along with APIs and other programmatic interfaces.
A first glimpse of how AIF is supporting interchange on the Argument Web
Prototype development on infrastructure and basic tools has reached the point where we can get a first glimpse of how the Argument Web will support a wide range of argument-related practice online. The video shows how different argument analysis tools can interact with each other, and how tools for analysis can work in harmony with tools for argument authoring and debate.
All the software is currently available, and going through some final testing before release. Later on in January, we will open access to the AIF database, and the first set of import/export filters. Then in February, we will release a public beta of the first practical Argument Web tool: FireBack, a Firefox plugin for argublogging. Tools for debate, analysis and automated computation will then follow later in the Spring.
OVA-gen alpha-2 is the second release of our tool for constructing and analysing Dung-style argumentation frameworks.
What’s new:
Acceptability semantics can be individually selected (instead of computing all semantics and scrolling through)
When semantics are selected, acceptability renderings will be updated automatically
Integration with the new version of Dung-O-Matic, which allows the following new semantics to be computed:
- admissible sets
- all preferred extensions
- all stable extensions
An initial prototype of a new dialogue system is now available in the Arvina tool. Arvina is built on top of Google Wave and implements the concept of Mixed Initiative Argumentation, whereby a mix of human players and agents enacting AIF resources can take part in a debate and have equal levels of participation: offering claims, asking questions, responding, challenging and so on.
You can see Arvina in action by watching the video below:
A project to support analysis of argumentation in Polish has recently been completed.
In May 2010, the Polish version of Araucaria, called Araucaria-PL, was released. Araucaria-PL is the first and only tool for argument analysis and diagramming that has a Polish language interface and Polish schemesets. The entire package can be downloaded as the zip file Araucaria-PL.zip.
Araucaria-PL has been used to create first online corpus of analyzed Polish argumentation, ArgDB-pl. ArgDB-pl is developed as a Polish version of ArgDB. Both corpora are built on the open AIF standard for argument representation.
Araucaria-PL and ArgDB-pl are the result of a project coordinated by Katarzyna Budzyńska (from Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw) and completed during her visit to ARG:dundee in 2009-10 supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education Program “Support for International Mobility of Scientists”. The project team also included Andrzej Nowacki and Joanna Skulska.
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.
Last night the ARG:dundee team conducted close argument analysis on a live 45 minute broadcast of an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Moral Maze, using our Argument AnalysisWall.
