Strange Aeons

We are looking at just the basics of argument analysis in this module but if any of you are interested in a little more depth then there are plenty of places online to find out more. A good place to start if you want to know about what is going on in argumentation theory research is to look at the Argumentation Research Group (ARG:dundee) in our own School of Computing. So that I am not solely blowing my own trumpet, as a member of ARG:dundee, I also found this argumentation blog written by a postdoc at the University of Lugano in Switzerland. I found it whilst looking for examples of people other than ourselves using Araucaria, and discovered that both Doug Walton, a friend of ARG:dundee and author of the core text for this module, and Chris Reed, original developer of this module had attended Lugano in 2007 to speak at a seminar.

Recently a new project started in ARG:dundee, the argumentation research group at Dundee University. This project, the Dialectical Argumentation Machines project, is quite exciting and involves building tools for working with arguments on the web.The project abstract is as follows:

Humans use argument to express disagreement, to reach consensus and to both formulate and convey reasoning. The theory of argument has found wide application in artificial intelligence, providing mathematical structures for automated reasoning, communication protocols for distributed processing and linguistic models for natural language processing. A key stumbling block, however, has been joining together models that focus on abstract, mathematical relationships with those that focus on concrete, linguistic relationships. The first objective of this project is to develop for the first time a theoretical account that connects static, "monologic" argument with dynamic, multi-person, "dialogic" argument and ties together abstract, mathematical models with concrete, linguistic representations. Furthermore, models of argument have been predominantly confined to the lab. Our goal is to translate the research advances into high profile, large scale deployments using partners with enormous user bases. Prototype systems in this area have been sufficient to demonstrate the unique advantages of practical argumentation systems to potential users of this research such as those within the broadcasting domain. There is a demonstrated public demand for argument-based exploration of current issues with complex scientific and ethical dimensions, demonstrated, for example, by the longevity and success of high profile programming featuring topical issues discussed in a stylised argumentative debate format. The second objective of this project is to develop the theory into implemented components that can form a foundation for application development to support actual programmes with prototype testing Unique advantages afforded by the technology will allow users to interact with the programme material as if they were themselves contributors, allowing arguments to be probed, tested and extended, and the distinction between in-programme and post-programme content to be blurred. The interaction metaphor shifts from 'message-then-next-message' to 'question-answer-riposte-challenge...'. The rich structure is natural for users, and provides rich metadata for programme-makers. Finally, in 2007 an exciting vision of the "world-wide argumentation web" (WWAW) was laid out, in which systems such as those constructed to work alongside practical prototypes could interact, both with each other and with other debate and argumentation systems, both populist and academic. Argument fragments, expressed as resources on the Semantic Web, can cross-refer, allowing different debating systems to navigate the WWAW according to various rules of dialogue captured by dialectical games. To bring this vision of the WWAW into reality, the third and final objective of the project is to allow execution of arbitrary dialogue games on a platform that provides interfaces for human players, and both interfaces and control for computer players of dialogue games. In this way, we want to harness the enormous channel to market and the high-profile reference case that is offered by collaboration within broadcasting. At the same time, the project will be developing platform technology that can support exploitation in other areas. During the project, we will work with the Scottish Mediation Network in the context of mediation tools, with the Ontario courts in the context of judicial summaries, and with the Universities of Lugano and Groningen in the context of legal education to identify exploitation routes for the technology.

Although I am not employed by this project it has brought the opportunity to increase the size of the group with the addition of three new members, Mark Snaith, who was one of my honours project students last year working on OVA and worked with ARG:dundee over the summer developing the newlook argdb and integrating it with OVA, John Lawrence, who originally developed MAgtALO whilst an MSc student working for Chris, and Floris Bex who recently completed his Ph.D thesis, entitled "Evidence for a Good Story" supervised by Henry. These new members all bring different perspectives to the group discussion but already it seems that there are now enough of us in the group that it is less hard work to keep the discussions going. Before we all had to work harder to share the load of running a group discussion between three of us. That is much easier with six.

There appears to be something wrong with the script included in the Araucaria install images which means that the classpath is not set properly to run Araucaria. This means that although all of the software is included, the JVM cannot find all of the extra jars or other items that the software relies upon to function correctly.To get Araucaria running on OS X, use the following procedure:

1. Assuming that you have Java 1.5 installed on your Mac (this is the default on recent versions, if you don't have it installed then download and install it), download the Araucaria3_1.dmg file.
2. Create an Araucaria folder in which you will keep your Araucaria software. This can be located anywhere you like but on the desktop will be fine for now. You can subsequently move it once everything is working.
3. Open the dmg file, select all of its contents and copy them into your new Araucaria folder.
4. Create a new text file called araucaria.sh and save it into your new Araucaria folder.
5. Edit araucaria.sh to contain the following script:

   #!/bin/bash
   java -Xmx96m -cp ./jars/mm.mysql-2.0.4-bin.jar:./jars/jai_codec.jar:./jars/Araucaria3_1.jar Araucaria

6. Make araucaria.sh executable:

   $ chmod 700 araucaria.sh

7. Run araucaria.sh

   $ ./araucaria.sh

8. You should now see something similar to the following