Argumentation in Computer Media - Pittsburgh Interest Group Newsletter - 5 May 99 Contents: 1. Summary of April l8 meeting 2. Next meeting - Wednesday May 12, 4:30-6pm, 279 Cyert Hall (Blue room) 3. Announcement: CHI99 SIG on Natural Language in Computer-Human Interaction 4. Distribution of newsletter, announcements 5. To be added to the mailing list 6. Beyond Pittsburgh - Argumentation News ===================================================================== 1. Summary of April l8 meeting Subject: Argumentation Meeting Minutes for April 8 Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 20:11:29 -0400 From: Violetta Cavalli-Sforza ATTENDEES Nancy Green, Giuseppe Carenini, Rodolfo Vega, Violetta Cavalli-Sforza OBJECTIVE Start on a classification of arguments CONTENT OF DISCUSSION 1. INITIAL DISTINCTION: Argument construction vs. argument analysis. Some of us are working in one of the two areas, some in both. 2. COMPONENTS OF ARGUMENT The following may serve as a basis for classification. There is likely to be more than one classification since one can classify using different dimensions. The classifications are likely to intersect. a. Preconditions A CONTESTED DECISION to be made among ALTERNATIVES Argument differs at least in this respect from communication in general. b. Participants - need to have some common experience/ground; more may be achieved through argument - have goals, needs, desires, preferences, beliefs, knowledge these are among the things that may be changed through argument c. Process - content, which includes objectives, reasons - rules, which may or may not be talked about strategies, which are usually not talked about - structure: reasoning structures structure of the process of arguing may come from rules - roles of the participants d. Effect This has several dimensions. (i) The goal of the argument: - win/lose (adversarial argument) - mutual benefit/agreement (persuasive, e.g. negotiations) - mutual knowledge building (create reciprocal understanding, without necessarily resulting in a win/lose situation or in agreement) (ii) Changes brought about by the argument include the creation or change of - knowledge - preferences - goals - beliefs - behavior (action) - power - strategy These types of changes might be termed the SCOPE of the effect (iii) The changes can affect the INTERMEDIATE products of the argument without necessarily affecting the FINAL outcome. E.g. An argument might cause a participant to change some belief or acquire some knowledge that is then used in the argument without necessarily changing their position/claim/goal; The intermediate change might lead to other components of the argument being used differently to achieve the same goal (iv) The argument's effects can be persistent or temporary (v) Changes can be 1-way or N-way. ========================================================================== 2. Next meeting - Wednesday May 12, 4:30-6pm, 279 Cyert Hall (Blue room) TITLE: Extending Toulmin's Model of Argument to Represent Scientific Debate Graphically WHO: Violetta Cavalli-Sforza WHEN: May 12, 4:30-6pm WHERE: 279 Cyert Hall (the Blue conference room) ABSTRACT: In this informal talk, I will describe some aspects of my dissertation research, focusing primarily on the application and extension of Toulmin's argument model to representing different kinds of arguments in scientific debate. The context for this work was an experiment in which students analyzed texts containing scientific arguments using a graphical interface. Students received instruction on describing and arguing for and against causal theories. In one condition students used a predefined representation based on the extended Toulmin model, in the other condition they developed their own representation. The efficacy of using vs. developing a representation was evaluated with respect to learning of the target instructional concepts and ease of coaching argument analysis. BIO: I received my B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering (Infrastructure Planning) from Stanford University in 1980. After a brief time in the transportation planning field I began moving towards computer science, obtaining an M.S. in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Stanford University in 1985. From 1985-1988, I was a member of the technical staff at DEC Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, working on compilers and visual debugging. In 1988 I moved to Pittsburgh to start a doctoral program in the University of Pittsburgh's Intelligent Systems Studies Program, working in the area of tutoring systems for logic proofs (with Drs. Richard Scheines, Wilfried Sieg and Jonathan Pressler in the CMU Philosophy Department) and argumentation, under the supervision of Dr. Alan Lesgold, at LRDC. I completed my Ph.D. in 1998. Since 1994, I have also been a full time research programmer at the Center for Machine Translation/Language Technologies Institute at CMU, working on machine translation for French and Italian and on a variety of tools for supporting the machine translation process. ======================================================================= 3. Announcement: CHI99 SIG on Natural Language in Computer-Human Interaction (To be held Thursday morning at CHI99.) Although there are several annual conferences that provide an opportunity for the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and CHI communities to interact, such as the yearly International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) and the Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), the time is right for interaction at their respective primary meetings, the annual conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the annual CHI conference. The primary goal of this SIG is to provide an opportunity for CHI attendees from both the CHI and NLP research communities who are interested in use of NL in the computer interface to discuss issues of mutual interest. Some of the technical issues of interest to both communities are 1. For what and under what conditions is NL appropriate in the human-computer interface? For what types of tasks or communication is NL appropriate? How does modality (such as spoken, typewritten, and direct manipulation of pre-generated text) affect appropriateness? How does the appropriateness of NL in computer media differ from its appropriateness in traditional forms of communication (such as face-to-face conversation and print media)? How do performance limitations of automated NL interpretation and generation technologies (e.g., speech recognition errors) affect appropriateness? What approaches can be used to answer the above? 2. What are the unique technical requirements for NLP in the human-machine interface? (e.g., coordination of generated text and graphics, incremental generation and interpretation, robust interpretation, modeling turn-taking and initiative in dialogue) For more information see our web site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sage/CHI99SIG.html ======================================================================= 4. Distribution of newsletter, announcements Feel free to forward this to colleagues who may be interested. I have discontinued sending news of the group to general-purpose local mailing lists because of complaints that I received. ======================================================================= 5. To be added to the mailing list: If someone forwarded this to you and you would like to be added to the mailing list please send your email address to me: nancy.green@cs.cmu.edu ======================================================================= 6. Beyond Pittsburgh - Argumentation News The May 1999 issue of Communications of the ACM has a special section on Persuasive Technologies.