We are delighted to be hosting a visit from David Price of debategraph. David will be with the group all day on 18 January, including giving a School seminar in Wolfson on his experiences with debategraph in different application contexts.

We are delighted to be hosting a visit from Martin Caminada who has recently joined the University of Aberdeen. He will be here on 12 December to deliver a seminar in Wolfson entitled,

Argumentation as Inference versus Argumentation as Dialogue —
reconciling two lines of research

Abstract:
In the formal argumentation community, one can distinguish two main lines of research: argumentation as inference and argumentation as dialogue. The first line of research, going back to the work of Pollock, Vreeswijk and Simari & Loui, is focused in argumentation as a way of performing non-monotonic entailment. That is, it is focused on the *outcome* of argumentation. The second line of research, going back to the work of Hamblin, Mackenzie and Walton & Krabbe, is focused on argumentation as dialectics, involving various actors. That is, it is focused on the *process* of argumentation.
In our recent work, we aim to reconcile these two lines of research.
That is, we aim to express argument-based entailment as the ability to
win a discussion. In particular, we are able to show that:
(1) grounded semantics can be interpreted in terms of a persuasion dialogue
(2) (credulous) preferred semantics can be interpreted in terms of Socratic dialogue
(3) ideal and stable semantics can both be interpreted as specific sub-forms of Socratic dialogue
Apart from abstract argumentation, we also examine the possibilities of redefining ASPIC-style entailment in terms of structured dialogue. In general, we think that argument-based inference is not so much about what is true, but about what can be defended in rational discussion.

We are delighted to host a visit from Ashwag Maghraby from the University of Edinburgh who will be visiting us Wednesday, 28 November, 2012 and will be delivering a seminar in Wolfson on,

Bridging the Specification Protocol Gap in Argumentation

Abstract. Today, argumentation is gaining greater visibility since it is being used as part of the high-level specification of multi-agent systems (MAS). However, as we build complete MAS that involve argumentation, there is a need to produce concrete implementations in which these abstract specifications are realised via protocols coordinating agent behaviour. This creates a gap between standard argument specification and deployment of protocols. This research attempts to close this gap by using a combination of automated synthesis and verification methods. More precisely, this research proposes a means to moving rapidly from argument specification to protocol implementation, using the Argument Interchange Format (AIF is a generic specification language for argument structure) as the specification language and the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC is an executable specification language used for coordinating agents in open systems) as an implementation language. The resulting system provides engineers with a means of moving rapidly from argument specification to implementation. In this presentation, I will start with a brief introduction about MAS as well argumentation. Then I will explain, by using an example, how the chosen automated synthesis and verification methods were used to close the gap between standard argument specification and deployment of protocols.

We are delighted to be hosting a visit from Prof. Tom Gordon from Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems (FOKUS) and  Institute of Computer Science of the University of Potsdam. Tom is here to work with us on interactions between the EPSRC-funded DAM project and the EU FP7 IMPACT project, and to explore in detail connections between the AIF and LKIF (used in Tom’s Carneades system) in particular. Tom is also giving a seminar here, on Wednesday, 28 September at 12 noon in Wolfson, entitled,

The IMPACT Argumentation Toolbox for Policy Deliberations

Abstract. IMPACT is a European Framework 7 research and development project on the theme of information and communications technology for governance and policy modeling. IMPACT is conducting original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. These models will be used to develop and evaluate a prototype of an innovative argumentation toolbox for supporting open, inclusive and transparent deliberations about public policy on the World-Wide-Web. Four integrated web applications are being developed for the IMPACT toolbox: 1. Argument Reconstruction Tool; 2. Structured Consultation Tool; 3. Policy Modelling Tool; and 4. Argument Visualisation and Tracking Tool. All four tools are based on the same underlying computational model of argument and exchange arguments using the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF), an XML format for argumentation schemes and arguments inspired in part by the Argument Interchange Format (AIF) developed partly at the University of Dundee’s School of Computing.

Chris is today taking part in an event to inaugurate the University of Houston Law School’s new program in Law and Computation. He joins folk representing legal AI (de Maat), Law (Ohm, Sichelman, Surden), Statistics (Izenman), Visualization (Katz), Business (Bommarito, Kotancheck) and the wider computer science world (Wolfram) to mark the start of Seth Chandler’s exciting new initiative at UH.

Floris is this week giving a series of invited lectures at the Institute of Evidence Law and Forensic Science of the
China University of Political Science and Law. A total of three lectures are scheduled: The Science of Proof, Argumentation and Legal Evidence and Supporting Legal Argumentation.

Chris is today giving a keynote presentation at the 2nd International Conference on Logic, Argumentation and Critical Thinking, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Argumentation and Reasoning (CEAR) at
Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile. A video of the keynote will be available.

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

Chris is giving a course on argumentation technology today at the Swiss doctoral programme on argumentation, Argupolis, at USI Lugano. The course is a partner to Douglas Walton’s earlier course on argumentation tools. The summary for the course is available here.

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.