Simon Wells

Edinburgh Napier University · School of Computing

This paper reports the design and comparison of three visualizations to represent the structure and content within arguments. Arguments are artifacts of reasoning widely used across domains such as education, policy making, and science. An argument is made up of sequences of statements (premises) which can support or contradict each other, individu...

Intelligent machines have reached capabilities that go beyond a level that a human being can fully comprehend without sufficiently detailed understanding of the underlying mechanisms. The choice of moves in the game Go (generated by Deep Mind?s Alpha Go Zero [1]) are an impressive example of an artificial intelligence system calculating results tha...

Predicting the course of events when newly launched products penetrate a market, and how those products supersede existing dominant products, is crucial for planning product development and market entry. The ability to simulate scenarios to model product launches offers a strong instrument for increasing our understanding and the teaching of market...

Safety cases play a significant role in the development of safety-critical systems. The key components in a safety case are safety arguments, that are designated to demonstrate that the system is acceptably safe. Inappropriate reasoning with safety arguments could undermine a system’s safety claims which in turn contribute to safety-related failure...

Within business games there is a need to provide realistic feedback for decisions made, if such business games are to continue to remain relevant in increasingly complex business environments. We address this problem by using software agents to simulate individuals and to model their actions in response to business decisions. In our initial studies...

In this paper we present the preliminary results of a survey of persuasive communication within the sustainable transport domain. This survey is underpinned by a reconstruction of the arguments used, a scheme oriented analysis of the corpus of reconstructed arguments, and elements of a theoretical and applied framework for using the corpus to effec...

Arguments are structures of premises and conclusions that underpin rational reasoning processes. Within complex knowledge domains, especially if they are contentious, argument structures can become large and complex. Visualization tools have been developed that support argument analysts and help them to work with arguments. Until recently, argument...

Simulations of real world scenarios often require considerably large numbers of agents. With increasing level of detail and resolution in the underlying models machine limitations both in the aspect of memory and computing power are reached. Even more when additional features like reasoning mechanisms of semantic technologies are used as in the AGA...

We introduce combinatorial dialogue games, an approach to strategising within argumentative dialogue games where the moves played are interpreted as moves within an edge-­‐ addition and/or edge-­‐removal combinatorial game. This enables an agent to reason about which move to make, regardless of the particular dialogue game that is being played. Our...

In this paper we present the preliminary results of a survey of persuasive communication within the sustainable transport domain. This survey is underpinned by a reconstruction of the arguments used, a scheme oriented analysis of the corpus of reconstructed arguments, and elements of a theoretical and applied framework for using the corpus to effec...

Safety cases play a significant role in the development of safety-critical systems. The key components in a safety case are safety arguments, that are designated to demonstrate that the system is acceptably safe. Inappropriate reasoning with safety arguments could undermine a system's safety claims which in turn contribute to safety-related failure...

ALIAS is a Python library for constructing, manipulating, storing, vi-sualising, and converting argumentation structues. It is available with full source code under a copyleft license and aims to become a Swiss Army Knife for working with arguments in a variety of end-user, researcher, pedagogical, and developer contexts.

Argument Mining has become an increasingly popular term over the last few years but it is unclear to what exactly the term refers. It definitely refers to an area of endeavour within argumentation theory and within computational argumen-tation and is likely to become an important research direction in the near future but it is not clear how we defi...

Despite increasing research into their use as a vehicle for Human-Computer Dialogue and Inter-Agent Communication, Dialogue Games have not seen good uptake in industry. One of the reasons for this is the lack of method-ologies and tooling for the development, evaluation, and exploitation of such systems. In this paper we build on the ProtOCL method...

This paper describes our initial work towards a segmentation-based approach to personalized digital behavior change interventions in the domain of sustainable, multi-modal urban transport. Segmentation is a key concept in market research, and within the transport domain, Anable has argued that there are segments of travelers that are relatively hom...

In this paper we introduce a gamification model for encouraging sustainable multi-modal urban travel in modern European cities. Our aim is to provide a mechanism that encourages users to reflect on their current travel behaviours and to engage in more environmentally friendly activities that lead to the formation of sustainable, long-term travel be...

This paper reports preliminary work into the exploitation of argumentation schemes within dialogue games. We identify a property of dialogue games that we call "scheme awareness" that captures the relationship between dialogue game systems and argumentation schemes. Scheme awareness is used to examine the ways in which existing dialogue games utili...

Mobile digital devices can help foster more sustainable urban transport behaviours by providing useful and usable tools that support urban travellers when planning and executing their trips and enabling new and disruptive travel behaviours. Such digital tools can help travellers to organise shared journeys, such as taxi sharing and car-pooling whic...

SUPERHUB is an European Mobility project that aims to implement measures to improve urban mobility and encourage environmentally friendly travel behavior by providing an Advanced Transport Information Service (ATIS) to users where real-time mobility options can be ranked according to their profile and preferences. Users will be able to make informe...

In this paper we present SUPERHUB, a prototype, open platform for urban-mobility that integrates multi-modal journey planning with captology influenced digital behaviour management in order to encourage increasingly sustainable travel behaviours. We build upon recent research in digital persuasion, mobile HCI, and findings from a user-centered desi...

Dialogue games are becoming increasingly popular tools for Human-Computer Dialogue and Agent Communication. However, whilst there is an increasing body of theoretical underpinning that demonstrates the value and utility of dialogue games, and also a range of novel implementations within specific problem domains, there remain very few tools to suppo...

This paper reports preliminary work into the exploitation of argumentation schemes within dialogue games. We identify a property of dialogue games that we call " scheme awareness " that captures the relationship between dialogue game systems and argumentation schemes. Scheme awareness is used to examine the ways in which existing dialogue games uti...

This paper describes the User-Centred Design process followed within the SUPERHUB project in order to investigate requirements, elicit user feedback and refine motivational features of a mobile app fostering the adoption of sustainable behaviors for urban mobility. We report the main lessons learnt from focus groups, participatory design sessions,...

This paper presents results from a longitudinal study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of different behavior change strategies for supporting sustainable transport choices in urban areas. We provided eight users with a mobile app deploying goal-setting, self-monitoring, rewards, social and sharing features and observed a positive impact of the...

An older paper from the ISSA 2006 conference that wasn't archived anywhere. I recently started extending this work towards a journal publication but thought it worth having the original available somewhere as well. ABSTRACT: There are many dialectical games and correspondingly there are many dialogical situations in which the games can be deployed....

This paper introduces the Dialogue Game Description Language (DGDL), a domain specific language for describing dialectical games. Communication is an important topic within agent research and is a fundamental factor in the development of robust and efficient multiagent systems. Similarly, argumentation has been recognised as a key component of an a...

This paper provides a concise introduction to the MAgtALO system. This prototype software environment provides a mechanism enabling users to engage in online debate using naturalistic dialogue underpinned by sound argumentation theory. MAgtALO is used to demonstrate how dialogue protocols can be applied to support flexible intuitive interaction wit...

The teaching of argumentation theory, argumentation skills and critical thinking has only very recently enjoyed any bespoke software support for classroom activities. As software has started to become available, it has been characterised by idiosyncratic, incompatible approaches not only to data representation and processing but also to underlying...

This paper builds upon the proposed dialogical extensions to the AIF, termed AIF+, by making explicit the representation of the role of illocutionary force in the connection between argument structures and dialogical structures. Illocutionary force is realised in the form of Illocutionary Application (YA-) nodes that provide an explicit linkage bet...

Argument Blogging is the process of harvesting textual resources from the web and structuring them into distributed argumentative dialogues. This paper introduces a prototype software system for performing argument blogging and storing the re-sultant dialogues so that they can be analysed and reused.

This paper reports on some prelimary research into how software tools like InterLoc can be used as an interface to the World Wide Argument Web (WWAW) and how the WWAW in return can provide a useful resource to agents acting within InterLoc. Two persuasive dialogue games, the human-oriented Critical Reasoning Game (CRG) from InterLoc and the philoso...

Over the last two decades, many online argumentation systems have been developed that support humans in arguing with one another on specific topics. Many of these have been studies in the academic laboratory, though a few of the larger-scale projects have been used in the wild. More recently, spurred perhaps by high-visibility arguments with strong...

This paper introduces the MAgtALO system, a prototype environment for online debate that aims to provide a mechanism for supporting naturalistic dialogue. MAgtALO demonstrates how dialogue protocols can be harnessed to achieve two objectives: first, to support flexible intuitive interaction with data in complex, contentious domains in order to faci...

This paper extends the Argument Interchange Format to enable it to represent dialogic argumentation. One of the challenges is to tie together the rules expressed in dialogue protocols with the inferential relations between premises and conclusions. The extensions are founded upon two important analogies which minimise the extra ontological machiner...

The Magtalo prototype environment harnesses dialogue protocols to support flexible, intuitive interaction with data in complex, contentious domains and provides mechanisms for eliciting structured knowledge. Magtalo represents the first example of an implemented online system that uses a closely specified argument-based dialogue protocol combined w...

In this paper two formal dialectic systems are described, a persuasion protocol (PP0) and a negotiation protocol (NP0), to- gether with a method for shifting from an instance of a persuasion dialogue to an instance of a negotiation dialogue. The rationale for this kind of shift is explored in the context of the fallacy of bargain- ing. Such a diale...

In order for one agent to meet its goals, it will often need to influence another to act on its behalf, particularly in a society in which agents have heteroge- nous sets of abilities. To effect such influence, it is necessary to consider both the social context and the dialogical context in which influence is exerted, typically through utterance....

There are many dialectical games and correspondingly there are many dialogical situations in which the games can be deployed. These situations include a range of differing dialogue types and social circumstances in which a dialogue may occur. This paper investigates the ways that cumulativeness is exhibited in a range of formal dialectic games and...

Systems of argumentation or ’computational dialectic ’ are emerging as a powerful means of structuring inter-agent communication in multi-agent systems. Individual systems of computational dialectic have been suggested and implemented to tackle specific problems but no comprehensive and comparative assessment has been made of such systems. This pap...

Formal dialectic systems have been suggested as a means to model inter-agent communication in multi-agent systems. The formal dialectic systems of Hamblin are practical models for the computational implementation of such a system of argumentative dialogue. This paper introduces a formal framework for the specification of Hamblin-type systems that h...

Systems of argumentation or 'computational dialectic' are emerging as a powerful means of structuring inter-agent communication in multi-agent systems. Individual systems of computational dialectic have been suggested and implemented to tackle specific problems but no comprehensive assessment has been made of such systems in general. Metrics by whi...

In this paper two formal dialectic systems are described, a persuasion protocol (PP0) and a negotiation protocol (NP0), together with a method for shifting from an instance of a persuasion dialogue to an instance of a negotiation dialogue. The rationale for this kind of shift is explored in the context of the fallacy of bargaining. Such a dialectic...

Computational dialectics are a powerful way to structure the com- municative acts that are expressed during the process of argumen- tation. Many such systems have been proposed but there has been no consensus over what constitutes a good system, or on what basis such a consensus could be built. This paper introduces a testbed for computational dial...

The primary purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion regarding the nascent Arguing Agents Competition (AAC) by exploring some of the issues relevant to the creation of a distributed online Competition. A secondary goal is to outline the implementational work that is currently underway and both to spur interest in contributions towar...