it is possible to use
the Argument Web
to explore, say,
mathematical
aspects of
arguments
phrased in
natural language
from various
sources on the Web.
Minister says Assad should be held accountable for war crimes;g
Newspaper. A column in the online
edition of The Guardian claiming Syria
is different from Iraq;h
Magazine. An article in Foreign Policy
exploring the military feasibility of attacking Assad’s Syria;i and
Radio. A point about the morality
of intervening put forward in the BBC
Moral Maze program;j
(You focus on the newspaper col-
umn, which links to other arguments
posted on the Web agreeing or dis-
agreeing with the fact that Syria is dif-
ferent from Iraq.)
Forum. One counterargument post-
ed on a forumk says the writer of the
column is a “leftie” with no idea what is
the difference between Syria and Iraq
or what real war means; and
On the same forum, another user
disagrees with this argument, saying
“Arizona Senator John McCain is for in-
tervention and is no leftie.”
Figure 1 outlines the small Web of
linked arguments, along with support
and conflict links. Note the statements
and arguments can be on different
webpages, but a counterargument can
also be given on the same page, as in
the forum. In order to realize linked
arguments across the Web we need
to conform to the demands of linked
data,
4 in that each piece of data, or the
nodes and links between them, is ad-
dressable through a unique URI that
stands in well-defined relationships to
other URI-addressable data. Only two
projects—Coherel, 7 and the Argument
Web—allow for linked argument data.
Cohere aims to link ideas on the
Web. Individual online statements can
be referred to through a URL, support-
ing a range of semantic relationships
between components (such as “ex-
plains” or any other relation the user
wants to define). While this breadth
is helpful for Cohere, it makes it diffi-
g http://youtube.com/watch?v=OBPcv7qSIi4
h http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/
feb/10/syria-not-iraq-wrong-intervene
i http://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/10/
the_syrian_invasion
j http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/
b01kkp5q#synopsis
k http://amazon.com/forum/politics?_encodin
g=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1S3QSZRUL93V8&cdTh
read=TxIAO1K6FZP0SI
l http://cohere.open.ac.uk
cult to build tools with specific appli-
cations; for example, argumentation
requires a fixed set of argumentative
relationships that can then support
computational processing (such as
visualization, navigation, and evalu-
ation) not easily supported if the rela-
tionships being captured are dynamic.
infrastructure of the Argument Web
The Argument Web aims to create a
Web infrastructure that allows for
storage and automatic retrieval and
analysis of linked argument data.
4
It is based on a common ontology
for argument called the Argument
Interchange Format6 (AIF) that ties
together natural linguistic models
of argument (such as models that
see argumentation as a language activity17) with abstract mathematical
models of argument.
2, 9 It is possible
to use the Argument Web to explore,
say, mathematical aspects of arguments phrased in natural language
from various sources on the Web.
AIF Ontology. At its core, the AIF
ontology distinguishes between information (such as propositions and
sentences, or the nodes in Figure 1)
and general patterns of reasoning that,
applied to specific information, provide the individual relations between
information (the links in Figure 1).
Links can be classified according to the
scheme they fulfill.
13 The AIF scheme
taxonomy is based on argumentation
schemes18 that are generally accepted
for scholarly investigation of argument; for example, the counterargument in Figure 1 saying the columnist
is a “leftie” is a typical ad hominem
argument,
17 an argument against a person. Here, it is not what the columnist
says—Syria is different from Iraq—that
is being countered but the credibility
of the speaker; that is, people who are
left-of-center politically should not be
taken seriously when commenting on
invading other countries.
In addition to argument structures,
or static structures representing information and the support and attack
links between them, as in Figure 1,
the AIF ontology is also able to capture the argument processes, or the
dynamic discussions in which people
put forward and challenge claims and
reasons. In recent work we showed
the AIF ontology can be used as a
