Tech Reports

ULCS-04-006

Computational Representation of Persuasive Argument

Katie Atkinson, Trevor Bench-Capon and Peter McBurney


Abstract

In this report we discuss the typology of dialogues given by Walton and Krabbe and offer a precise interpretation of them. We go on to discuss one of these dialogue types - persuasion - in the context of practical reasoning and the problems associated with such reasoning. We propose a perspective on practical reasoning as presumptive justification and critical questions, giving an extension to the account proposed by Walton [24]. This provides us with a foundation for a protocol, named PARMA, for a dialogue game based on this theory. We go on to give an axiomatic and denotational semantics for PARMA and discuss two implementations based on PARMA.

[Full Paper]