At the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2012) in Istanbul, Turkey, I participated in the Computational Models of Narrative workshop.
Arguments as Narratives
Adam Wyner
Abstract
Aspects of narrative coherence are proposed as a means to investigate and identify arguments from text. Computational analysis of argumentation largely focuses on representations of arguments that are either abstract or are constructed from a logical (e.g. propositional or first order) knowledge base. Argumentation schemes have been advanced for stereotypical patterns of defeasible reasoning. While we have well-formedness conditions for arguments in a first order language, namely the patterns for inference, the conditions for argumentation schemes is an open question, and the identification of arguments `in the wild’ is problematic. We do not understand the `source’ of rules from which inference follows; formally, well-formed `arguments’ can be expressed even with random sentences; moreover, argument indicators are sparse, so cannot be relied upon to identify arguments. As automated extraction of arguments from text increasingly finds important applications, it is pressing to isolate and integrate indicators of argument. To specify argument well-formedness conditions and identify arguments from unstructured text, we suggest using aspects of narrative coherence.
Slides for Arguments as Narratives
Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerCMN2012,
author = {Adam Wyner},
title = {Arguments as Narratives},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative ({CMN} 2012)},
year = {2012},
editor = {Mark Finlayson},
pages = {178-180},
}
Shortlink to this page.
By Adam Wyner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Category: argumentation
The Summer School on Law and Logic, Florence, Italy
I will be participating as a teaching assistant in the Summer School on Law and Logic in Florence, Italy, July 16-20, 2012. The school is jointly hosted by the European University Institute and the Harvard Law School.
From the description:
The Summer School on Law and Logic is the first course ever to provide a comprehensive introduction to the wide variety of uses of logic in the law. Our aim at this Summer School is to provide law students, graduate law students, and legal professionals with a knowledge of the methods of formal logic and the ability to apply those methods to the analysis and critical evaluation of legal arguments and sources of law (including statutes, cases, regulations, constitutional provisions).
The Summer School includes the basics of propositional and predicate deductive logic, as well as the use of logic for capturing representing deontic and Hohfeldian modalities, analogical reasoning and inference to the best explanation. It also addresses presents some aspects of non-deductive reasoning in law, such as defeasible reasoning, including argumentation schemes and inductive reasoning.
We believe that the kind of background in formal logic we offer in this course can be a very powerful tool for use in legal theory, for developing doctrinal legal research, for working in legal informatics (the application of computer programs to the analysis of law), and, more generally, for the practice of law.
This is an innovative school about core issues and approaches in Artificial Intelligence and Law. For me, it will be an opportunity to connect with familiar colleagues, work with new ones, and find out what lawyers think about formal logic. In addition, some of the legal materials that we will be analysing will be new to me, so that will be instructive.
I hope that this school is the beginning of an integration of AI into law school education.
Shortlink to this page.
By Adam Wyner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Modelling Policy-making – a Call for Papers
A Special Issue the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law on
Modelling Policy-making
Special Issue Editors
Adam Wyner, University of Liverpool, adam@wyner.info
Neil Benn, University of Leeds, n.j.l.benn@leeds.ac.uk
Paper Submission Deadline: May 28, 2012
We invite submission of papers on modelling policy-making. Below we outline the intended audience, context, the topics of interest, and submission details.
Context
We live in an age where citizens are beginning to demand greater transparency and accountability of their political leaders. Furthermore, those who govern and decide on policy are beginning to realise the need for new governance models that emphasise deliberative democracy and promote widespread public participation in all phases of the policy-making cycle: 1) agenda setting, 2) policy analysis, 3) lawmaking, 4) implementation, and 5) monitoring. As governments must become more efficient and effective with the resources available, modern information and communications technology (ICT) are being drawn on to address problems of information processing in the phases. One of the key problems is policy content analysis and modelling, particularly the gap between on the one hand policy proposals and formulations that are expressed in quantitative and narrative forms and on the other hand formal models that can be used to systematically represent and reason with the information contained in the proposals and formulations.
Special Issue Theme
The editors invite submissions of original research about the application of ICT and Computer Science to the first three phases of the policy cycle – agenda setting, policy analysis, and lawmaking. The research should seek to address the gap noted above. The journal volume focusses particularly on using and integrating a range of subcomponents – information extraction, text processing, representation, modelling, simulation, reasoning, and argument – to provide policy making tools to the public and public administrators. While submissions about tool development and practice are welcome, the editors particularly encourage submission of articles that address formal, conceptual, and/or computational issues. Some specific topics within the theme are:
- information extraction from natural language text
- policy ontologies
- formal logical representations of policies
- transformations from policy language to executable policy rules
- argumentation about policy proposals
- web-based tools that support participatory policy-making
- tools for increasing public understanding of arguments behind policy decisions
- visualising policies and arguments about policies
- computational models of policies and arguments about policies
- integration tools
- multi-agent policy simulations
Submission Details:
Authors are invited to submit an original, previously unpublished, research paper of up to 30 pages pertaining to the special issue theme. The paper should follow the journal’s instructions for authors and be submitted online. See the dropdown tab under the section FOR AUTHORS AND EDITORS.
Instructions for Authors on:
https://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10506
Submit Online on:
https://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10506
Each submitted paper will be carefully peer-reviewed based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition and relevance for the journal.
The shortlink to this webpage is:
http://wyner.info/LanguageLogicLawSoftware/?p=1258
A PDF version of this CFP:
CFP – Modelling Policy-making
Contact the special issue editors with any questions.
By Adam Wyner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Note on Workshop on FP7 eGovernance and Policy Modelling Projects
On January 27th, 2012, I attended a workshop in Sheffield, United Kingdom on current FP7 eGovernance and Policy Modelling projects. This was an opportunity to hear from and meet participants in other projects, largely based in the United Kingdom. The information (somewhat augmented) about the workshop is below. My colleagues in the IMPACT Project, Professor Ann Macintosh and Neil Benn, presented our side of the story.
Aims
Agenda
Presentations of some current EU FP7 Projects
Tools to support policy-making using computational argumentation.
Professor of Digital Governance, Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, The University of Leeds.
Tools in a carbon-reduction context.
Dr Steve Cassidy, MRCMH, Edinburgh
Michael Gardner, University of Essex.
Tools in a sustainable development context.
Gary Simpson and Jonathan Gay –EASY Connects, South Yorkshire.
A toolset that will allow citizens and public administration decision makers to engage interactively in group planning, simulation and assessment of governmental policy.
Prof Paul Foley, Tech4i2 Loughborough/Brussels.
Reinforcing links between different global communities of policymakers, researchers, experts and citizens through a combination of content production and ad hoc and online and offline animation.
Prof Paul Foley, Tech4i2
Supporting the decision making process through opinion-mining and visualisation tools.
Tina Balke, University of Surrey.
A tool for filtering and redirecting public service enquiries using text analytics and an ontological information structure.
Policy making and the real world
Presentations of three new Interreg IVC projects with South Yorkshire partners covering sharing of current best practice in environmental policy making, set in a wider vision for Sheffield.
Policies which are required to enable Sheffield to become an exemplar in tackling climate change.
Edward Murphy. Technical Director. Mott MacDonald.
Sheffield sustainable development policy.
Adrian Hacket, Building for Future, Sheffield.
Ian Bloomfield, Durham County Council
What Next?
Dr Bridgette Wessels, ICOSS, University of Sheffield
By Adam Wyner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
UMMS Workshop Paper: Arguing about Emotions
Martyn Lloyd-Kelly and I have a forthcoming paper on arguing about emotions in legal cases where the ‘heat of passion’ plays a role. It appears in the proceedings of the Workshop on User Models for Motivational Systems the affective and the rational routes to persuasion.
Arguing about Emotions
Martyn Lloyd-Kelly and Adam Wyner
Abstract
Emotions are commonly thought to be beyond rational analysis. In this paper, we develop the position that emotions can be the objects of argumentation and used as terms in emotional argumentation schemes. Thus, we can argue about whether or not, according to normative standards and available evidence, it is plausible that an individual had a particular emotion. This is particularly salient in legal cases, where decisions can depend on explicit arguments about emotional states.
By Adam Wyner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Recent Papers
A couple of more papers which have been accepted at upcoming conferences or workshops. The papers are all downloadable from the links provided.
Arguing with Emotion
Martyn Llloyd-Kelly and Adam Wyner
UMMS July 11, Girona, Spain
The paper at the link is a draft and will be somewhat revised for distribution at the workshop.
Abstract
Emotions are commonly thought to be beyond the pale of rational analysis, for they are subjective, may vary even with respect to the person experiencing the emotion, and may conflict with rational thought. In this paper, we develop the position that emotions can be the objects of argumentation, which we express by introducing emotion terms in emotional argumentation schemes. Thus, we can argue about whether or not, according to normative standards and available evidence, it is plausible that an individual had a particular emotion. This is particularly salient in legal cases, where decisions can depend on explicit arguments about emotional states.
On the Linguistic Analysis of Argumentation Schemes
Adam Wyner
LAGB September 7-10, Manchester, United Kingdom
This is an accepted abstract of a paper which is as yet to be written.
By Adam Wyner
Distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0
Recent Papers
My colleagues and I have had the papers below accepted for upcoming conferences. The papers are all downloadable from the links provided.
Towards a Structured Online Consultation Tool
Adam Wyner, Katie Atkinson, and Trevor Bench-Capon
ePart August 2011, Deflt, The Netherlands
Abstract
The Structured Online Consultation tool (SCT) is a component tool in the IMPACT Project which is used to construct and present detailed surveys that solicit feedback from the public concerning issues in public policy. The tool is underwritten by a computational model of argumentation, incorporating fine-grained, interconnected argumentation schemes. While the public responds to easy to understand questions, the answers can be assimilated into a structured framework for analytic purposes, supporting automated reasoning about arguments and counter-arguments.
Multi-agent Based Classifi cation Using Argumentation From Experience
Maya Wardeh, Frans Coenen, Trevor Bench-Capon, and Adam Wyner
PAKDD May 2011, Shenzhen, China
Abstract
An approach to multi-agent classi fication, using an Argumentation from Experience paradigm is describe, whereby individual agents argue for a given example to be classifi ed with a particular label according to their local data. Arguments are expressed in the form of classi fication rules which are generated dynamically. The advocated argumentation process has been implemented in the PISA multi-agent framework, which is also described. Experiments indicate that the operation of PISA is comparable with other classi fication approaches and that it can be utilised for Ordinal Classifi cation and Imbalanced Class problems.
Note: I was added to this paper to present it at the conference. I’m familiar with the argumentation aspects, but the data-mining is new to me.
Semantic Models for Policy Deliberation
Katie M. Atkinson, Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, Dan Cartwright and Adam Z. Wyner
ICAIL June 2011, Pittsburgh, USA
Abstract
Semantic models have received little attention in recent years, much of their role having been taken over by developments in ontologies. Ontologies, however, are static, and so have only a limited role in reasoning about domains in which change matters. In this paper, we focus on the domain of policy deliberation, where policy decisions are designed to change things to realise particular social values. We explore how a particular kind of state transition system can be constructed to serve as a semantic model to support reasoning about alternative policy decisions. The policy making process includes stages that support the construction of a model, which can then be exploited in reasoning. The reasoning itself will be driven by a particular argumentation scheme for practical reasoning, and the ways in which arguments based on this scheme can be attacked and evaluated. The evaluation provides alternative policy positions. The semantics underpin a current web-based implementation, designed to solicit structured feedback on policy proposals.
Towards Formalising Argumentation about Legal Cases
Adam Z. Wyner, Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, Katie M. Atkinson
ICAIL June 2011, Pittsburgh, USA
Abstract
In this paper we offer an account of reasoning with legal cases in terms of argumentation schemes. These schemes, and undercutting attacks associated with them, are expressed as defeasible rules of inference that will lend themselves to formalisation within the ASPIC+ framework. We begin by modelling the style of reasoning with cases developed by Aleven and Ashley in the CATO project, which describes cases using factors, and then extend the account to accommodate the dimensions used in Rissland and Ashley’s earlier HYPO project. Some additional scope for argumentation is then identified and formalised.
By Adam Wyner
Distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0
Workshop on Argumentation and Case-based Reasoning at ICCBR Sept 12-15, 2011
Call for Papers
Argumentation and Case-based Reasoning (ACBR 2011)
September 12, 2011
A workshop at
ICCBR 2011: The International Conference on Case-based Reasoning, September 12-15, 2011
Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
Overview:
Case-based reasoning is standardly formalised as having four-steps – retrieve, reuse, revise, and retain. In this formalisation, there is little scope for debate. However, in domains such as law, medicine, and product selection, participants (lawyers, doctors, or consumers) may argue for or against a given legal determination, clinical treatment plan, or product choice based on what is retrieved from the case base, how the cases are reused, and what revisions are made to a case. The participants must not only justify their argument, but also defend it against counter-arguments; as well, subsidiary arguments must be justified and defended. Moreover, the information in the case base may be incomplete; different individuals to the dispute may hold alternative views, values, or consumer-oriented goals; and the reasoning itself may only be plausible rather than certain. Given this, we resort to defeasible argumentation on information derived from the case base, where claims only presumptively follow from premises and reasoning about the overall ‘network’ of arguments can be related to alternative contexts or audiences. At the end of the reasoning process, some decision must be made, which may vary depending on audiences.
Recent research on formalising or supporting decision-making in social systems (law, medicine, consumer discussion websites) shows the crucial role of argumentation in structuring, clarifying, and reasoning with respect to complex, possibly inconsistent information. Bringing researchers together to discuss results across domains will lead to greater understanding of commonalities or problems and forward state-of-the-art research on the intersection of and interaction between case-based reasoning and argumentation.
Intended Audence
Researchers working on Argumentation and CBR in any theoretical approach and application domain (Law, Medicine, Web-based consumer sites, Games, etc).
Areas of Interest (preliminary):
Author Guidelines:
The workshop solicits full papers and position papers. As well as fully-developed, thoroughly evaluated research, authors are welcome to submit tentative, incremental, and exploratory studies. Papers not accepted as full papers may be accepted as short research abstracts. Submissions will be evaluated by the program committee. Papers should be submitted in LNCS format, with a maximum of 10 pages. Camera-ready copies of papers have to be ready on the 25 of July 2011 (hard deadline) so that they can be included in the workshop proceedings.
Submissions should be submitted electronically in PDF to the EasyChair site by the deadline (see important dates below). As it stands now, you submit the paper via ICCBR submission page on EasyChair, submitting the paper to Workshop 6: Argumentation and Case-based Reasoning.
Publication:
Papers will appear in the proceedings of the conference workshops. Further details about publication are to follow.
Webpages:
ICCBR
Argumentation and Case-based Reasoning
Important Dates:
Paper submission deadline: 27 June 2011 by 00:00 GMT
Acceptance notification sent: 06 July 2011
Final camera-ready version deadline: 5 August 2011
Workshop date: 12 September 2011
Contact Information:
Primary contact: Adam Wyner, adam@wyner.info
Program Committee Co-Chairs:
Adam Wyner (University of Liverpool, UK)
Trevor Bench-Capon (University of Liverpool, UK)
Program Committee (preliminary):
Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool
Frans Coenen, University of Liverpool
Mehmet Goker, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Nancy Green, University of North Carolina
Stella Heras, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
Cindy Marling, Ohio University
David McSherry, University of Ulster
Edwina Rissland, University of Massachusetts
Maya Wardeh, University of Liverpool
Presentation at tGov on the IMPACT Project
On March 18, 2011, I gave a presentation at tGov 2011 on the IMPACT Project.
The idea behind “transformational government” (or t-government) is that new technologies will change the way that the public interacts with the operation and delivery of public services, which are web-based, joined-up, citizen-centric than in the past. See, for example, Directgov, the website for the UK government. The IMPACT Project, which relates to how public policy is made, clearly addresses some of these issues.
Follow the links for the slides of the talk A Structured Online Consultation Tool and the paper Towards a Structured Online Consultation Tool.
Argumentation for Public-Policy Making – Presentation at the Central Office of Information, United Kingdom
In October, 2010, I made a presentation on the various elements of the IMPACT Project, which aims to apply computational models of argumentation to support public-policy making, at the Central Office of Information (COI) in London, United Kingdom. The COI is the UK government’s center for marketing and communications. It works with government departments (on a contract basis) to inform and engage citizens in issues that affect their lives. The COI is under the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
This was an interesting opportunity to learn more about how the UK government gathers and delivers information to the public.
For my part, on behalf of the IMPACT Project, I was outlining the several tools which could be used to support public-policy making. I outlined several of the current tools (some of which are used by the COI), their limitations, and some of the advantages that would be gained from the IMPACT tools. The slides are IMPACT Project Presentation at the Central Office of Information.
Since that meeting (the second), I’ve been in touch with Suzannah Kinsella, Head of Public Engagement at the COI. However, the UK government has been under some reorganisation and review (see links under Review into Government Communications). Work from the IMPACT Project may be a useful part of this. In early April I shall again meet with her and another colleague at the COI to see how we can specifically move ahead in collaborating with the COI on development of the tools.