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European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems

International Conference on Agreement Technologies

EUMAS 2016, AT 2016: Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies pp 549–564Cite as

Characterising Polemical Disputes

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10207))

Abstract

We want to draw attention to “polemics”, collective processes that are complex, unavoidable and not infrequently of substantial consequence in social, political and economical terms. We propose to address the topic from the perspective of agreement technologies in order to elucidate its inherent epistemic, argumentative and social coordination aspects. Our aim is to develop an analytical framework to describe the key components of actual controversies and eventually provide technological means to participate in an ongoing disputation. In this paper we take three modest steps in that direction: (i) we foray the topic and introduce some conceptual distinctions and terminology, (ii) we characterise a type of polemical dispute that we think is significant from a practical perspective and amenable to formal and computational treatment and (iii) we articulate some salient challenges we find pertinent for the agreement technologies community.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Manuel Appert & translated by Oliver Waine, “Skyline policy: the Shard and London’s high-rise debate”, Metropolitics, 14 December 2011. http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Skyline-policy-the-Shard-and.html.

  2. 2.

    For detailed discussions of all the examples see Wikipedia articles on Franklin Dam controversy, Narita International Airport Construction, Keystone Pipeline, NIMBY, Greek government debt crisis, Catalan self-determination referendum 2014, Stem cell controversy, Same sex marriage, Arguments for and against drug prohibition.

  3. 3.

    Notice that in spite of these additional conditions our notion of polemical dispute still applies to the four classes of polemics we mentioned in Sect. 2.1.

  4. 4.

    The relationships with the three levels are quite obvious. A fact in \(\mathcal {W}\) may give grounds to any stakeholder for promote a request \(\rho \) to open a due process \(\mathcal {I}\). Although \(\rho \) might not be reflected as such in the controversy \(\mathcal {C}\), at some point it is likely that utterances related with \(\rho \) will appear in \(\mathcal {C}\). Because level \(\mathcal {W}\) is within the institutional framework, anything that happens in \(\mathcal {W}\) and is relevant for the due process may be promoted into \(\mathcal {I}\). The rulings of \(\mathcal {I}\) (say \(\psi \)) will become public in \(\mathcal {W}\) and may produce polemical moves in \(\mathcal {C}\).

  5. 5.

    We may use Toulmin’s [29] argument structure that includes four types of components—a claim which is sustained by the other components: grounds (premises, atomic arguments, other claims), warrant (inference, pertinence, norm or regulation, ...) and qualification (certainty, number, power,...)—whose actual content depends on the type of dialogue.

  6. 6.

    http://debategraph.org/home.

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Acknowledgements

We received support of SINTELNET (FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) and project MILESS (MINECO TIN2013–45039-P). We also wish to thank reviewers of the previous version of this paper, “Making sense out of polemics” (ArgMAS 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa (UAM-C), Mexico

    Christian Lemaitre

  2. IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Pablo Noriega

Authors
  1. Christian Lemaitre
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  2. Pablo Noriega
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Correspondence to Pablo Noriega .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Natalia Criado Pacheco

  2. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Portugal

    Carlos Carrascosa

  3. Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Nardine Osman

  4. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Julián Inglada

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Lemaitre, C., Noriega, P. (2017). Characterising Polemical Disputes. In: Criado Pacheco, N., Carrascosa, C., Osman, N., Julián Inglada, V. (eds) Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies. EUMAS AT 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10207. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59294-7_44

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59294-7_44

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