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A Dialogue System for Evaluating Explanations

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Book cover Argument Evaluation and Evidence

Part of the book series: Law, Governance and Technology Series ((LGTS,volume 23))

Abstract

This chapter presents a theory of explanation by building a dialectical system that has speech act rules that define the kinds of moves allowed, such as putting forward an argument, requesting an explanation and offering an explanation. Pre and post-condition rules for the speech acts determine when a particular speech act can be put forward as a move in the dialogue, and what type of move or moves must follow it. This chapter offers a dialogue structure with three stages, an opening stage, an explanation stage and a closing stage, and shows how an explanation dialogue can shift to other types of dialogue known in argumentation studies such as persuasion dialogue and deliberation dialogue. Such shifts can go from argumentation to explanation and back again. The problem of evaluating explanations is solved by extending the hybrid system of (Bex, Arguments, stories and criminal evidence: a formal hybrid theory. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011) which combines explanations and arguments to include a method of testing stories called examination dialogue. In this type of dialogue an explanation can be probed and tested by arguments. The result is a method of evaluating explanations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Assertions include only statements (propositions), and do not include promises, commands, and so forth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR), University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

    Douglas Walton

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  1. Douglas Walton
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Walton, D. (2016). A Dialogue System for Evaluating Explanations. In: Argument Evaluation and Evidence. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19626-8_3

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