Goal-based Reasoning for Argumentation

This book provides a practical argumentation model for intelligent means end-reasoning, a distinctive type of reasoning used for problem-solving and decision-making.

Douglas Walton (Author)

9781107545090, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 August 2015

301 pages, 59 b/w illus. 2 tables
22.8 x 16.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

This book provides an argumentation model for means end-reasoning, a distinctive type of reasoning used for problem-solving and decision-making. Means end-reasoning is modelled as goal-directed argumentation from an agent's goals and known circumstances, and from an action selected as a means, to a decision to carry out the action. Goal-based Reasoning for Argumentation provides an argumentation model of this kind of reasoning showing how it is employed in settings of intelligent deliberation where agents try to collectively arrive at a conclusion on what they should do to move forward in a set of circumstances. The book explains how this argumentation model can help build more realistic computational systems of deliberation and decision-making, and shows how such systems can be applied to solve problems posed by goal-based reasoning in numerous fields, from social psychology and sociology, to law, political science, anthropology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, and robotics.

1. Introduction to practical reasoning
2. Practical reasoning in health product ads
3. Formal and computational systems of practical reasoning
4. Practical reasoning in arguments and explanations
5. Explanations, motives, and intentions
6. Practical argumentation in deliberation dialogue
7. Goal-based argumentation in different types of dialogue
8. Practical rationality.

Subject Areas: Artificial intelligence [UYQ], Mathematical theory of computation [UYA], Mathematical logic [PBCD], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Linguistics [CF]